Lauren Bonk: Nothing like newborn clothes to get you ready for a baby

This weekend, my mom and I went through all of Charlie’s newborn clothes and set aside anything that seemed remotely gender-neutral. We washed and folded all of the teeny, tiny little outfits and placed them in their very own set of plastic drawers.

I swear, I will avoid doing normal laundry for as long as I possibly can, but I just love washing and folding that first load of preparatory newborn clothing. I remember getting bags and bags of hand-me-down 0-3 month clothes when I was pregnant with Charlie. I will never forget how giddy I felt as I folded all of those tiny onesies and placed them on a shelf next to the rest of our baby things. Back then, it was so foreign. I simply couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that we were going to have a baby person around who would actually fit in those doll-sized pants.

This time the act was more familiar, but it had the same giddifying effect on me. Well, it also made me just a little bit sad, seeing as how my now giant, sentence-forming toddler used to fit into those clothes… but it still made me giddy.

With this pregnancy, I feel like I haven’t let myself give as much thought to the new baby like I did with Charlie. This time, I’ve been so concerned with managing life and being a good mom and wife that this new addition to our family has been like a little fuzzy image floating off in the far-off future. Sure, I’ve been anxious to have the baby, but if I’m going to be completely honest, it was mainly because I’ve been so uncomfortable. I realize that sounds terrible, but I think it’s just been kind of a survival mechanism.

Matching those itty-bitty socks and zipping up those little feetie-pajamas was just what I needed to knock me into new baby-mode, though.

Now I’m excited! Do you guys realize that I have absolutely no idea what the gender of this baby is? We found out with Charlie, so we had all of our boy stuff ready and waiting for him. I could close my eyes real tight and try to imagine what our new baby boy was going to look like. I had no idea, of course, but at least I had something to go off of. This time, I just have absolutely no clue! Sometimes I feel like it’s a girl, but it’s not even a strong feeling…just a quiet hunch. I’m not really the kind of person to have super-accurate hunches.

I’m really happy about this shift in attitude. It’s nice to move my focus to something in the future rather than being so concerned with what’s happening right now. I think the fact that Paul is done with school for Christmas break is also a pretty big contributing factor to my change in mood… but all those newborn-sized stocking caps sure don’t hurt.

Lauren Bonk is an Omaha mom who is married with one child and one on the way (very soon!). Read her Fridays on Fruita Moms.