Nesting explained in 10 easy steps
1. Get pregnant and grow for 8.5 months until your tummy can sufficiently support a bowl of chili con carne with cheese and onions.
2. Eat it while semi-reclined.
3. Notice something in a corner of the ceiling. A spiderweb? Dust? Whatever it is, your appetite is suddenly gone.
4. Take the bowl into the kitchen. Note that the area around the base of the sink has a strange tan film. Funny, you didn’t notice it yesterday. What else haven’t you noticed?
5. Sweep every room with narrowed, critical eyes. Everything is filthy-dirty. The baseboards, the light fixtures, the drapery, the backside of pictures on walls, the carpeting under the heaviest bookcase. There are ASHES in the fireplace! There is a small wad of hair on the third stair! Toothpaste in the sink! Feel the tears welling in the corners of your eyes.
6. Collapse on your bed. The comforter smells like an old book. Find someone else in the house and demand this person smell it immediately. If they fail to agree with your assessment, unleash messy sobs all over the nauseatingly stinky and offensive comforter until you remember it is dry clean only.
7. Go to the phone book and to look up the closest dry cleaner. Gasp when you notice coffee rings dried on the cover and several ripped pages. Why can’t anyone in this family take care of anything? Why?
8. Flip through the pages from the back to the front, stopping on Travel Agencies, Pizza, and then Paint. PAINT! “There isn’t enough paint in the entire universe to cover the disgrace of these walls!” you shout at the gunky, disease-ridden phone book.
9. Realize you feel absolutely desperate and have no idea where to begin completely overhauling and sanitizing your entire house, so you grab the broom and sweep the kitchen. Gosh, you are suddenly very tired.
10. Scoop a bowl of ice cream with chocolate syrup and place it on your tummy as you recline on the couch. A drop of sticky black syrup hits the upholstery. Shrug.
Popularity: 21% [?]
[...] latest Mile High Mamas post is a hard-hitting examination of nesting—you know, that thing you do when you are [...]
I promise you I scrubbed the entire first floor of our house (all tile) with a toothbrush when I was pregnant with my second child. What kind of fool am I?
Yeah. Been there. I actually had the worst case of nesting in the universe when I was an expectant *adoptive* mom, awaiting the arrival of 9 and 11 year old girls. I whirled live a dervish around that house, certain somehow that if the baseboards weren’t clean and their bedroom wasn’t painted the proper color and the woodpile wasn’t stacked neatly, the girls would take one look and beg for a ride back to Ethiopia.
I was ridiculous.
Mary, mom to 10
I painted my whole house while pregnant…so I totally understand the nesting thing. There was never a time I could get my house clean enough or was happy enough with the state of my home while pregnant.
Totally insane, especially considering that now? It’s pretty much in a constant state of disarray.
Not exactly in the realm of nesting, but more along the lines of “crazy pregnancy demands”: We “had” to get rid of all the upholstered furniture in our house because of the way it “smelled.” We had no furniture in our living room for weeks. Crazy.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind a little of that nesting instinct throughout the year. Why does it suddenly abandon us (or at least me) after giving birth? As if once babies/toddlers/children bring life to a home, the place is cheerful and shiny and clean without any (frantic, continual, obsessive) effort on your part and everybody lives happily ever after–no germs/dust/dirt/grime?
I remember this nesting instinct! Somehow it turned me into a wanna be Marth Stewart too. I remember when I was nine months pregnant with my 1st child, sewing all the bedding FROM SCRATCH. Why? Because I insisted there were no patterns I liked and I wanted it to look just right. Needless to say, I went into labor early, when the bedding was only half finished. Only thing worse? Trying to finish the bedding on no sleep with a newborn. ei yi yi.
I totally understand when I was pregnant with my first I went in to labor 5 weeks early and my husband was in the room painting and putting the crib together. I was nesting but couldn’t do anything from the couch. Now with the second one on the way due in two months I am making up for the first one. We are repainting our daughters room and the new nursery plus I think the entire house is out of order and a wreck so i am cleaning out and changing everything. My husband says nest away but don’t drag me into it