Baby Shower 1.0 - Tri Cities
I’ve known for awhile that I’m a morning person. Not that I like to get up early, but my brain functions the best early in the morning. I don’t get as easy distracted. I’m able to get in touch with my emotions better. Lately I’ve had a lot of morning commitments which doesn’t leave a lot of time for writing (unless I want to get up like SUPER early). It’s taken me awhile to write this post, not because I’ve been putting it off but because I let life get in the way.
When we first found out our IVF treatment had worked and we were expecting, and people asked me if we were going to have a baby shower I didn’t know if I wanted one or not. I didn’t really know how I felt about being pregnant. I’ve never been pregnant before. I didn’t know if I would miscarry or if I’d be insanely sick or how my emotions would evolve over time. I felt like I needed a bit of space to process how I was feeling and I’d circle back around to the idea of a baby shower when we were closer to her actually being here.
Fast forward a few months and pregnancy is going great. No debilitating symptoms, we’re getting used to the idea of not claiming ‘childless’ as part of our identity, we have our 20 week ultrasound and everything is healthy. Now I’m starting to feel like a baby shower would be fun. The timing happens to coincide with a Dolezel family reunion. My MIL started hosting these annual gatherings last year to remember the 20 year anniversary of her fathers passing away. It was such a fun gathering she hosted one again this year and asked if I’d like to combine it with a baby shower since so much family would be in town.
She and a few other family members put together the most wonderful baby shower! Over the last 8+ years I’ve been to 1 baby shower (and that was only a few months ago), so I really didn’t know what to expect. We played some fun games, had delicious food and they absolutely spoiled Ellie, Drew and I. We came home with a car filled to the brim with clothes, books, toys, and necessities.
As we were opening gifts I could feel my mentality about pregnancy starting to shift. Since our positive blood pregnancy test I’ve had a hard time believing it’s real. I’ve had such an easy pregnancy, and my baby bump has been pretty non existent…it’s easy to believe that it’s not real. We’ve had ultrasounds and seen her, but still something just wasn’t clicking. I guess, I wasn’t feeling the way I thought I’d feel about being pregnant. I remember when I was preparing for the 70.3 Ironman in Oregon in 2021 and I kept saying to my friends “I just don’t feel prepared” and finally one person asked what I thought prepared would feel like since I’d never done a race like this before how could I know what prepared felt like. That was a big moment for me to realize that I had an expectation of what prepared would feel like even though I’d never actually experienced it before. How could I know? I couldn’t. I think it’s similar with this pregnancy. We’ve been wanting a baby for SSSOOO freaking long I started to build up expectations of how I would feel, only to now be pregnant and not feel the way I thought I would. I don’t feel disappointed or negative in anyway, I just don’t feel “as expected”.
So what did I expect to feel? Hm….good question. I don’t know. Excited. Savoring every moment. Overjoyed. As silly as it sounds I didn’t really think about how slowly your body changes and that I wouldn’t be a big beach ball for the entire 9 months. I think my brain just jumped to the conclusion that if you’re pregnant you’re a big round whale immediately. I expected to have morning sickness and weird cravings (so far none). I expected to be miserable for some of the time (so far no misery). Mood swings are always part of the formula for making a baby right? Not for me so far (I keep checking with Drew about this and he agrees that I haven’t been super mood swingy). Hollywood told me my libido should go insane while pregnant, that hasn’t happened. I know the serotype of “nesting” is normal and somewhat expected, I haven’t really felt that either. Needless to say I had a lot of expectations about how I would feel and reality hasn’t met that (yet?).
I should add that I’m feeling like a curious observer of my unmet expectations. I don’t feel resentment. I don’t feel like I SHOULD be feeling a different way. Instead, I just feel like I’m watching myself and taking in what my expectations were and what reality is. I think it’s healthy.
Back to the baby shower. As we were opening gifts, I could feel the excitement finally kicking in. It started to feel like we actually really do have a baby coming in January and people are helping us get ready. I was tapping into other people’s feelings and history of early days with their babies and for me the feelings were contagious. We got so many lovely gifts and clothes. I can’t wait to have her nursery all put together and put her in some of the outfits we got. I want to take pictures and send them to the people who gifted things to her. Needless to say, the baby shower was a smashing success. Here are some pictures to remember the day.
I’m so thankful for a group of supporting family and friends who are celebrating this transition into a new phase of life with us. We have 2 more baby showers that are currently being planned. More pictures and posts to come!
