Packing on the pounds

Having reached the glorious third trimester, I decided to evaluate my weight gain over the past six months to see if it could shed any light on what I can expect over the coming three. Granted, weight gain is expected during pregnancy and even promoted. That said, I'm starting to wonder if I'm not overdoing it. According to the day-by-day pregnancy book that I read religiously and the myriad e-mails I get relating to pregnancy, the baby itself still weighs less than a kilogram at this point. And while I'm glad that Valentine doesn't account for all 12 of the kilograms I've put on so far, because I hate to think how they would ever get THAT monster out of me, especially if it's expected to roughly triple its weight before being born, I am somewhat concerned that my weight gain has become excessive.

Looking at this mathematically, so far, for every 1 kilo that went to the baby, 11 kilos went to me. Let's round that down to 10, just to make the math easier. Taking into account that the baby will likely be around 3.5 kg at birth (assuming an average, full-term baby), that's another 2.5 kg for the baby. At the current rate of increase, that means another 25!!! kg for me! And since I still get to carry the baby until its birthday, we can add on the baby's 3.5 kg on top of that! And factoring back in the kilogram I so cleverly rounded out of the equation, OMG. I don't think we need to take this all the way to the conclusion. You can see where it's headed: off the frigging scale.

Is this ratio realistic? Possibly not. However, I AM addicted to chocolate-covered kruidnoten, as stated before. Also, I have three weeks of gluttonous holiday even before my maternity leave starts in January. One week to be spent writing (fueled by kruidnoten, of course) and two weeks, yes, you guessed it, gorging myself at Christmas. I did mention earlier all the great stuff I was going to eat in Canada, right? Exactly. I think my weight forecast is probably right on the mark: extreme, with a chance of a monster baby.

Ordering online like I have unlimited credit

While I understand that some people are show-offs gung-ho on the ball with this whole baby preparation stuff and some of us are a bit more lazy lackadaisical... relaxed about it, I thought, seeing as I don't actually have a baby yet that I wasn't too far behind.

How wrong I was.

I finally decided to order the stroller (below) because until the end of October, they'll throw in a car seat and diaper bag. And do you know when it said it would be delivered? The first week of January.

Now, as those of you who read my bio (right) know, I am due in February. And while TECHNICALLY this means that the stroller will be delivered six weeks before the squirming baby inside me is due to climb out, I consider January to be a bit last minute. <Enter panic, stage right>

See, the stroller was just the beginning. I figured that would be the hardest decision. But we still need furniture and all kinds of stuff! And if none of it can be delivered until January, well shit, I'd better at least stop putting it off and damned well order it! <And so a lifetime of procrastination comes back to bite me in the ass.>

So I've been shopping online like my life depended on it. Totally for the baby. Who really better not arrive too early.

Going to the Baby Dump and looking online at the Baby Butt

No, I'm not going to dump the baby and no, I don't have a thing for baby bottoms. Eww.

Baby Dump and Baby Butt are two brilliant names of baby stores in the Netherlands. Seriously. I don't know what marketing geniuses came up with these, but I think they missed the day when they learned that if you're saying something in another language to be cool (because English is SO cool) you might want to check with a couple of native speakers about the word choice. Clearly focus groups are not big here. Because who wants to shop at Baby Butt? Let's take this idea one measly step further: What comes out of baby butts? Shit. So let's name our store that so everyone will know our stuff's shit. WHUCK?

Or the Baby Dump?! Seriously the first time I heard about baby dump I thought it was a joke, like we call Canadian Tire 'Crap Tire' - an affectionate nickname of sorts. BUT NO!!! Baby Dump is the store's real name. And it's a MAJOR baby superstore here! My sick mind quickly took it to be the place to dump your baby, but nope, the marketing team here was apparently thinking along the lines of a dump being a place to get cheap stuff. But if they'd only asked first, I would have told them the trendy word they want is Outlet or Depot. Because a dump is where you throw your shit. The shit you don't want. Therefore Baby Dump = store full of shit you don't want.

Now, despite my abhorrence of the name, I've actually been to the Baby Dump, and I got the free goodie box they give to pregnant women.  Inside, among other things, there was a plush seal - the store mascot.
The poor mascot - as labelled on the toy - is named Dumpy. Honestly. Isn't that sad? It wasn't bad enough that they completely failed to find a cool name for the store, they had to take it out on the mascot?!

Dumpy. The Baby Dump mascot

Now here's where it gets bad. Instead of boycotting these stores on principle - as I should - don't encourage them! - I regularly surf over to their websites, browsing, increasing their hits. Because as horrible as their names are, if it means saving a few euros on this whole parenthood endeavor, I'm totally willing to get my shit from the Baby Dump or the Baby's Butt itself.

Crying a little bit...

It's SO unfair.

I have been scouring the internet for weeks looking for the best deals on baby stuff (further to the 'Oh my god baby stuff is expensive' epiphany). So today, on Marktplaats - kind of like an online PennySaver - I found the stroller that I've been wanting to buy but holding off on because I'm still hoping to find it cheaper somewhere else. Note: it IS cheaper somewhere else - EVERYWHERE outside of mainland Europe. Boo. Anyway, as I was saying, today I found it on Marktplaats.

The stroller - Mountain Buggy Swift 2010 Chilli

The Mountain Buggy Swift, Chilli (red), used 3 times and including a bunch of extras, for €209 LESS than it costs in the stores without the extras. Obviously, I immediately emailed the guy selling it.

And five minutes later, he replied: "Someone just picked it up 5 minutes ago. Sorry and good luck."
SO UNFAIR. The (polite) bastard sold MY stroller while I was trying to buy it from him. How dare he?!

So I'm crying a little bit. And considering buying it new in England. If I buy enough stuff, eventually the exchange rate will work to save me that same €209... Why is everything more expensive in euros?

Refinancing my house to pay for baby furniture

I don't know if you've noticed, but baby stuff is insanely expensive. A baby room needs furniture, which will only be used for a couple of years (ok, maybe a few more if you happen to have more kids and time it right) and these items, they're not cheap. Seriously. A baby bedroom suite, comprised of a crib, a changing table and a child-sized armoire runs from €800 to €3000. For €3000, it had better be solid wood, hand carved by Santa's elves and delivered fully assembled in my baby room by flying reindeer. But no! That's just do-it-yourself high-gloss white pressboard. Or the very stylish (actual wood!) east coast styles - New England beach look, with white-washed or gray-stained rough wood. These are actually quite rough. EVEN the INSIDE of the crib. So not only are you paying an arm and a leg for trendy, basically unfinished furniture, you'll have to deal with snagged and probably torn sheets if not a ridiculous number of slivers in you and your newborn child. Wow. What a great idea.

You know's what's even worse about these overpriced furniture suites? You still have to buy the mattress, the changing mat, any and all linens and the cute matching shelf. And do you think those come cheap? Ha.

Aside from the fact that I don't like most of the styles - really, who designs these things? We also don't need the armoire. We have a closet already, thank you, and it will do just fine even if it is adult sized. But these baby suites? The pieces are not sold separately. So you buy the whole thing for thousands of euros or you get nothing. Nice. And the cribs they do sell separately? Are UGLY. AND expensive. Or cheap but so flimsy I wouldn't use it for a doll, let alone this actual little person I've been taking care of here in my belly for so many months.

So I was looking for something sturdy, cute, and a bit more... ahem... economical. And where did I turn? Come on. Did you really have to think about it?!

IKEA, of course. Home of inexpensive, trendy furniture. Also, what can't possibly be a coincidence, FULL of pregnant women. Seriously. Has anyone ever done a survey of this? I swear AT LEAST 50% of the women in any given IKEA at any given time are pregnant.

Yet the IKEA baby selection? Sucks. Cheap crib? Check. But you know how current thinking says to tuck the baby in with his/her feet against the footboard so s/he can't squirm down under the covers and die? Well the IKEA cribs have poles all the way around, so there is no footboard. Whuck? So, in the event that the covers come loose, not only can baby squirm down underneath and possibly die, s/he can also squirm down and get his/her fat little legs stuck in the bars from hell. Great design IKEA. Really.

IKEA does, however, have a cool changing table. But its still €200 and there's no matching crib. And all the IKEA changing mats are inflatable. I'm sure this is all part of IKEA's scheme to reduce shipping costs. But after that sucker's been smeared with baby shit and is slowly deflating? It's not going to be reinflated by my mouth, let me tell you. I'd have to go buy a new one. Um... Fail.

IKEA having failed me, I'm back to the baby specialty stores and their baby suites.

So I'm looking at refinancing our house to pay for the baby suite. Or housing the baby in a drawer. One of the two. What do you think?

Poking and prodding

In the last few weeks, I've been feeling Valentine move more and more. According to the pregnancy books, this is because s/he is getting bigger and stronger and therefore has less room to move around and is better capable of delivering solid kicks that extend well outside the cozy cocoon of amniotic fluid and into the wall of my abdomen, where I can feel them.

The feeling is pretty cool and, to be honest, kind of addictive. As a result, I've taken to poking and prodding my bump to encourage Valentine to kick me. Yes, I'm already encouraging parental abuse.

But Internet, don't you see? I do it for the baby. After all, it usually works, meaning that I'm helping Valentine to develop his/her muscles and reflexes. And, just as importantly, feeling Valentine kick me lets me know s/he's still alive in there, which gives me a warm, fuzzy, relaxing feeling. And that's important because without constant reassurance, I tend to freak out and get insanely concerned that Valentine ISN'T okay. And that's stress and it's bad for the baby.

So. Now you know. Poking and prodding... it's all for the baby.

Enforced hairiness

I woke up this morning to my BlackBerry blinking at me that I had new email. This was not a big surprise; every morning when I wake up I have, at the very least, a Groupon deal waiting for me. So anyway, this was the best freaking Groupon deal I've seen in months. 90% off! For a beauty treatment.

The Groupon was for 6 sessions of IPL (intense pulsed light for epilation, in case you're wondering) which, in theory, is basically just light that turns into heat in your follicles and vaporises the hair and follicle so you never have to shave or wax that area again. EVER.

Now for those readers who don't really know me yet, you might assume I'm a regular at my local beauty salon, but seriously, nothing could be further from the truth. I don't even know where the local beauty salon IS. But the chance to permanently de-hair certain particularly prolific areas and NEVER HAVE TO SHAVE OR WAX THEM EVER AGAIN? This is a deal especially written with low-maintenance girls like me in mind.

Anyway, because the treatment was something I'd never done before and because there are like 60 gajillion restrictions when you're pregnant, I figured just to be safe I'd check what the internet had to say. And can you guess what the internet said? Really. You'll never believe it.

That's right. IPL is not recommended during pregnancy. Intense light on your skin - even skin that is almost never displayed where other people might be able to see it, EVEN skin nowhere near the baby - should be avoided during pregnancy. Now, things that could actually injure me, fine. Things that could cause cancer or something in the baby? Obviously. But strong light focused on my skin? Where the light only penetrates to a maximum depth of 4mm? HOW IS THIS BAD? People, the time is fast approaching when I won't even be able to see the lower half of my body in my tiny shower stall. This could have been my salvation! 

And do you know what the reasoning was? Hormones. HORMONES! Because of the hormones (which are so abundant in pregnancy), the experts don't know what might happen. The procedure might not work. It might affect pigmentation. But it might work! It might be fabulous. Because you know what else isn't recommended during pregnancy? Waxing. Because you also might react to the wax. Leaving shaving as the only acceptable hair-removal process during pregnancy. Did I mention that in about 2 weeks I will no longer be able to see the lower half of my body in the shower? Leaving almost HALF A PREGNANCY of enforced hairiness? Nice.

So, hairiness: it's for the baby. OK, maybe not, but it's totally the baby's fault.