11 weeks...

Evidently the baby is the size of a fig this week and is almost fully formed. His/her (perhaps I'll call the baby "shim" until I know for sure) hands will soon open and close into fists, tiny teeth are beginning to appear under his/her (shis?) gums and some of his/her (sheir?) bones are beginning to harden. She's already busy kicking and stretching, and his/her (shit's?) tiny movements are so effortless they look like water ballet (I should go see a water ballet so I know what that means). These movements will become more frequent as her body grows and becomes more developed and functional. I won't feel the baby's acrobatics for another month or two - nor will I notice the hiccuping that is almost certainly happening now that they baby's diaphragm is forming. 

So that's what I've learned from pregnancy week by week... a few other random thoughts.

On the fact that having a baby is kind of surreal. When I first found out I was preggers it was too insane to imagine the birth or the person that was being formed. So how did I relate to the news? My inner decorator connected before my inner mom. I went online and started looking at baby retailers for nursery ideas. I've been wondering if that's strange, or perhaps some reflection of consumer culture that rather than envisioning life with the actual baby I started thinking about the baby's room? Or was that just a baby step (no pun intended) towards nesting for parenthood? Who knows... anyway, I had the crib and gender-dependent bedding picked out before baby names. Wondering if I should feel conflicted about that. Anyway, a few things I learned during my baby exporatory mission: 

- Modernnursery.com is a great place to start if you don't want your baby to be born among fluffy-pink-cup-cakiness or animal themes. Not to hate on those things, but I'm pretty sure the baby won't notice either way, so I kind of want a room that goes with the rest of the house. That being said, we might have to sacrifice the baby's college education to afford some of that stuff, so I'm going to have to find a way to supplement with more affordable look-alikes from discount places like Walmart and Target.

- Land of Nod is awesome. Expensive, yes, but those are nurseries I can picture in my house. Plus they have strollers that look like they belong in MoMa. That seems like a good thing to me.

- Pottery Barn Kids is cute, but seems overpriced for what is it. All of the nursery bedding looks relatively kiddish to me, and maybe it's just my unnurturing nature (hopefully the hormones will deliver that gene), but the stuff just isn't my style. What I did love at PB Kids were the upholstered rockers, which look gorgeous on the website and come with to die for printed fabrics you can choose from. So nice looking that I was contemplating paying the ransom they were asking for it. Until I went into an actual PB Kids store and saw one in person. Up close it's kind of flimsy and cheap looking. We sat in it and it's not super comfortable. Overall, a big let down. 

- Target had me hopeful, especially because they have a baby line from Dwell that I'm all over aesthetically. Too bad when I read the online reviews most people had given the line 1 star and begged fellow shoppers not to purchase mod furniture that falls apart, comes scratched up and never lives up to the beautiful pictures. Major disappointment.

- Babies R Us. I can't even go in that place. I break out in hives. It's overwhelming and feels unmanageable. I might be as frightened of Babies R Us as I am of childbirth. The entire store seems to shout, "You know nothing stupid parent to be! You don't know which of these 200 breast pumps is good or why! You don't know the difference between all 800 strollers!" Who wants to put themselves through that? I will definitely not being registering there.

- Walmart. The store experience is much better than most would think and the smaller department is far less overwhelming. Obviously, you want more options than they have on the floor, so I started sifting through the dot.com store to find a lot of cute furniture! They had a chair that looked IDENTICAL to the Pottery Barn rocker, only instead of $1,500 it was $299 (and after seeing the PB chair in the flesh I'm sure the WM version is as good quality-wise). The stuff I liked best was by a line called BabyMod, which unfortunately is only sold online and seems to be sold out of everything. Though to be fair, I can see why. It looks like the stuff on Modernnursery.com for thousands less and has good consumer reviews. I'll be checking back to see when/if they get more in. 

All for now!