Topher and I have been a couple for 13 years, married for more than 5 1/2. We still do our own laundry, more so out of habit than any territorial issues or hold ups about household duties. But I spent a good part of today doing load after load of laundry for someone I haven’t even met yet.

Somehow, pre-arrival, our baby has more clothes than either of us do. I haven’t had a baby shower or bought more than 3 little onesies myself. Gifts and hand-me-downs make up the majority of the layette so far. Though the socks are the tiniest things I’ve ever seen and the t-shirts are so small I can hardly believe the baby will ever fit into them, the stack, collectively laundered and folded fills up most of the crib where it’s all currently waiting.

Like everything else there is to learn about Baby, laundry is complicated. I remember college and the years that followed when each wash required scrounging for quarters, I scoffed at “separating”, stuffing as much as I could into a barrel that wasn’t equipped to hold that much, and I flipped the detergent jug upside down to eek out every last drop.

Yesterday I polled friends to find out about the rules of laundry detergent for babies and was introduced to a whole new world of dermatological cleanliness.

My conclusion is that the people over at the Dreft company are sprinkling some kind of warm fuzzies narcotic in with their laundry liquid because moms are gaga for the stuff. So much so that they’ll overlook the $11.75 it costs for a jug that can hardly call itself a jug: the container only covers about 32 loads. In bed with Dreft may be a merry band of dermatologists who have lead us all to believe that the happy suds of washing machines will wreak havoc on our babies and that any degree of cross-contamination will mean a pock-marked dooms day for our sweet, soft, smooth and supple babies’ bums.

I wanted so badly to reject the party line and dump a full cap of syrupy blue scented Tide from a family size jug that I scored on sale into the washer to bubble up the baby bounty. But alas, I am a new mom with anxiety about splotchy skin and an uncomfortable little one, so I fell in line. I stood there in the detergent aisle examining my options (knotty with the requirements of the high efficiency washer, which supposedly requires anti-sudsing soap. Sigh.). Finally, after entirely too long, I chose a small bottle of “Free and Clear” All, hoping that Baby’s skin will be all free and clear of problematic rashes and bad reactions to perfumes or dyes.

A friend spared me of otherwise inevitable ignorant embarrassment by letting me in on the secret she learned when the nurse looked at her cross-eyed for not knowing that adding dryer sheets to the baby pile is a big no no. Noted.

Two others piped up to helpfully suggest the great corralling power of a mesh laundry bag for keeping itsy-bitsy socks from being sucked out into the dryer abyss. I grabbed one after the detergent deliberating was through and it already earned back the money spent by sparing me of searching for lost matches.

Rumor has it that an exorbitant amount of time will be spent with the hamper and its associates, so I feel relieved that I’ve become at least initially acquainted with the process.

I wonder how long it will take to get used to seeing mini pants, shirts, sweaters and socks amidst our own adult wardrobe.

I was listening to the “Twenty Miler” playlist on my iPod while waddle jogging on the treadmill the other day. The compilation is an energetic mélange of 49 songs intended to help me through the long runs of marathon training last fall. As I listened to the Foo Fighters, “But Honestly”, I wondered if the baby was tapping along to the beat. Or if he/she could tell that I get a burst of energy when Guster’s “The Captain” comes up. Or if Toph’s son/daughter has any idea how many times he listened to #15, The Dropkick Murphy’s “Shipping Up to Boston” while he trained to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I wonder if Baby listens as intently as I do to the lyrics of “Have You Ever” by Brandy Carlile (“Have you ever wandered lonely through the woods? And everything there feels just as it should. You’re part of the life there. You’re part of something good. If you’ve ever wandered lonely through the woods. Have you ever stared into a starry sky? Lying on your back you’re asking why. What’s the purpose I wonder who am I. If you’ve ever stared into a starry sky.”).

I speculate about what the baby can hear all day every day actually.

Does she/he hear Topher and me laughing with each other? Does Baby know when Nana and Pop or Grammy and Poppy call to check in on how he/she is growing? Or when my girlfriends call with good advice for pregnancy foibles or registry conundrums?

I wonder if Baby can hear Topher’s impressively accurate imitation of the Villanova band horn section basketball game medley.

Can Baby hear his/her cousins, Helen, Michaela and Olivia when they put their faces right up close and talk through my belly button? Did he/she hear when Michaela said she was going to be the babysitter and change all the diapers?

I hope of my internal monologues, the joyful ones full of anticipation are more audible than those riddled with quiet worries.

Can Baby hear us read a book to him/her? Does he/she know when we are saying good morning and good night?

Baby, do you hear what I hear?

I remember New Year’s Eve 1993 vividly. A bunch of us were gathered around the television at a friend’s house to watch the ball in Times Square Drop and ’93 turn into 1994: the year we’d all graduate from high school. When the countdown started, the shrieks, squeals and cheers began and before I knew it, I was in the midst of a pile on of friends, all hugging and giddy and goofy over it being OUR year. We were the seniors, the Class of 1994, and now we were officially on the home stretch of the path toward the milestone.

I don’t recall feeling the same significance of advancing to a new year since then (save for 2000, which was big as the millennium and because we all wondered if the power grid would fail and the world would end…). Until now.

When midnight came and went last week, it took my breath away a little. Despite the fact that this pregnancy has sped by so fast I can barely believe it’s actually happened, somehow the yet-to-be-crossed bridge from 2009 to 2010, the year the baby will be born, created the illusion that time was a plenty still and that our child’s arrival was a bit away (giving us leeway to say, register, finish the nursery, read more instructions on how this will all work!).

But now here we are, on the home stretch of the path toward this major milestone.

Since a few days after July 2, 2009, Toph and I have been tracking the growth of Baby Desmond with the help of various books and websites. A favorite ritual is sitting down to read weekly updates in books like Your Pregnancy Week by Week or in emails from Baby Center, the subject lines of which declare “You’re X weeks pregnant!”. Honoring the allotted time for learning about what’s happening in there induces anticipation similar to the kind stirred in kids by the daily opening of an Advent calendar door to reveal the chocolate candy piece inside during the countdown to Christmas.

The updates always include a size comparison, to give you an idea of the baby’s growth. I get a big kick out of the fact that these similes are always made to food items, since food is my professional life. A short sampling:
At 6 weeks our baby was the size of a lentil bean;
At 12 weeks, a lime;
At 16 weeks, an avocado;
At 20 weeks, a banana;
At 27 weeks, a cauliflower;
At 31 weeks, my current status, Baby Center tells us that our baby weighs about as much as 3 naval oranges.
(For a complete picture slide show of size comparisons, go here)

The likening to food is helpful because you get a clear image of the size. Usually.  Sometimes, though, it’s baffling. When my friends Erika and Deacon were expecting, they wrote about a confusing comparison to shrimp:

“This one website did use a shrimp as an example a week or two ago, which was kind of weird. Are we talking a curled up shrimp? One stretched out? We talking 31/50 count shrimp? Or maybe U8 shrimp – those are pretty big.”

I had a similar experience when a book approximated Baby to a squash and another source held it up to “a small pot roast”. Not only were the comparisons seemingly so arbitrary when pitted against each other, the small pot roast analogy was just ridiculous since at the time the baby was just barely 2 pounds. I mean, if you’re going to invest in making a pot roast, it really should be bigger than that!

Oddly enough, not long ago I bought two beautiful heads of cauliflower on a Wednesday afternoon to make for a dinner gathering on Friday night. Come Thursday, when the “You’re 27 weeks pregnant!” email arrived, it read “this week, your baby weighs almost 2 pounds (like a head of cauliflower)”. This coincidence freaked me out a little bit. (Oh, but if you’re a fan of cauliflower, I did develop a tasty recipe that week for my Serious Eats column, which you can find here: Spaghetti with Roasted Cauliflower and Bacon Herbed Breadcrumbs.)

It’s been amusing learning about the baby in terms of food. Now, let’s just hope Baby likes such a variety of food when the time comes for him/her to get acquainted with it.

Holy Moses Basket, this registering for Baby business is mind-boggling!

We were entirely snowed in yesterday, so we finally planted ourselves down to research and select a few things online. Armed with Baby Bargains, a must-have book gifted to us by friends who’ve already been down this path (see link in list of good books to right), and printed registries of four friends who recently made it through the process relatively unscathed, we made some slow progress.

But if you’re reading this and you have any advice, suggestions, insider knowledge or absolute favorite items, please pipe up. We’re all ears.

Wading through all this stuff—the options, the requirements, the restrictions and the rules—makes me wish a little bit for simpler times…like maybe circa Laura Ingles on the prairie when toys and playmats in primary colors didn’t exist, the best swaddling option was a bear skin blankie, and “breast pump” meant baby or milking the cow.

Speaking of breast pumps, I was alarmed by the term “professional-grade” in the context of those. My mind translates this to “industrial strength”, which equates to “ouch” and begs the question “is that really necessary?” The cost of these machines (which bare an unfortunate resemblance to the torture contraption Count Rugen uses on Wesley in The Princess Bride) is also exasperating. But alas, a baby’s got to eat, and I suppose compared with some of the “toys” (so that’s what the kids are calling them these days…) that parents are buying for their children this Christmas, the medieval expulsion device disguised by chubby bottles and a colorful logo seems practical.

Registering and shopping for Baby is an exercise in evaluating and defining “need”. The trouble is, as a new parent, there is just no way to tell what need will mean for you and your own baby.

So we’ll continue to read and reference, and outright copy our friends’ decisions until we know enough to help another set of parents make theirs a few months from now.

Until then, help us with ours. Leave a comment with some recommendations!

Do this. Stand up. Put your feet shoulder-width apart and lift your arms straight out to the side from the shoulders to your fingertips. Imagine that your bra is stuffed with several Ziplock bags of mashed potatoes (men, if you are following along, use an ace bandage to strap two 28-ounce cans of tomatoes—any variety—to your chest). Now, shimmy, which is to say, shake your shoulders back and forth, sending a ripple down your arms to your fists. Simultaneously, shuffle sideways across the floor, while still facing forward, leading with one leg and pulling the other toward the leading leg. Make sure you’re listening to 80s music set to an aggressive aerobic beat. To get the full effect, your bladder should be very full and you should be wearing a WWF championship-wrestling belt tightly around your waist, right on top of your full bladder. There. Now you can sort of see where I’m coming from.

My exercise of choice is running, but after a stress-fractured ankle sidelined me, I took a long break and sought alternative fitness outlets. I started taking a strength/aerobic class three times a week, during which the instructor sufficiently kicks my ass and then hands it to me to take home at the end. It is excellent, exhilarating and exhausting.

The class consists of non-stop motion for either 60 or 90 minutes, half aerobic, half strength training and it is always completely packed with loyal students. My general countenance throughout the session is focused, serious and desperate to not fall off the step blocks or roll off the Bosu ball in some spastic way, causing a scene amidst my coordinated fellows.

One woman in the class sports a full on aerobic outfit a la 1987, sweatband included, and spontaneously interjects a “Whoot! Whoot!” along with the beat of any given song. Another woman obviously wanted to be a backup dancer for a pop star, but has settled for life among the laymen. She seems to use this class as an outlet, because when she does the shimmy (described above), she really puts her soul (and her neck and head) into it and I catch her smiling at herself in the mirror (the same mirror I avoid looking at too much).

I have been determined to stay active and relatively fit through this pregnancy so that I don’t feel like I have to learn to walk again after the baby arrives. This was pretty easy to commit to during the first trimester and halfway through the second, with the exception of the days when I felt like I could sleep for 20 of the 24 hours allotted. But things progressed: bladder security was compromised; my boobs became enormous, sore and unruly; my lungs feel as if they’ve been pushed up toward my shoulders and I’ve become a loud breather; I can’t lie down on my back because the growing baby might smush my major arteries; and most horrifying—women who are or have been pregnant, back me up on this—there is serious risk of involuntary audible gas expulsion at any moment, particularly when doing jumping jacks or squats. I started to feel like a liability to myself in the class, so I’ve put in on hold until the spring, and have returned to running, walking and careful weight training on my own.

Exercising while pregnant has helped me feel energized, clear-headed and healthy and I’m grateful to have been able to keep it up for so long, even if I look ridiculous and feel like I’m wearing several sacks of potatoes on my chest, hips and waist.

I didn’t even wear a two-piece bathing suit until my mid-twenties, so it’s weird for me to post pictures of my bare stomach up here on the interweb. But pregnancy is all about the belly, and friends and family afar have demanded photographic proof!

The thing is, I didn’t really start showing much until well into my second trimester. At around week 18 or so, someone said to me, “If I didn’t know you were pregnant I would think you were just a little heavy around the middle.” Under any other circumstances, that would have stung, but her description was entirely accurate. Until about week 23, I could hide the belly under a loose blouse, a zipped up fleece vest, or a chef’s coat and no one would have taken a second glance.

When you’re pregnant, you have this sort of unspoken camaraderie with other pregnant women, perfect strangers included. It’s like the Jeep wave, the gesture exchanged between drivers of Jeep Wranglers. So when you’re not yet showing, you catch yourself on the verge of a visual fist bump with a woman who is obviously pregnant and you have to pull back, because physically you’re still incognito, regardless of how pregnant you feel! It’s awfully strange.

I knew I’d become apparent to the outside world when I was running one day in mid-November and noticed several people headed at me from the other direction glance at my mid-section. Only recently have people been daring enough to come right out and call it. Our neighbor last week said “And congratulations are in order. I noticed the other day when you walked outside.” Tonight at the gym the owner came up to me and said that he’d just looked over and thought, “Tara looks like she’s got a chunky tummy thing going on, so I thought I’d come over and find out.”

Discernable progress was slow for me, given my height (I’m 5’11”) and that this is my first pregnancy (subsequent pregnancies tend to be apparent sooner). These days, at the start of my third trimester, I am finally obviously available for the mom-to-be fellowship acknowledgment. It’s good to be an unconcealed member of the club!