Getting ready
My wife (Jen) and I got married on 15th September 2018 (and a smaller, SF City Hall ceremony, on 23rd March 2018).
We always talked about having kids and knew it was something that we would love to have in the future. It wasn’t until after we were married that the discussions got real and we decided that we would start to try in July. Thinking it would take a while to be successful, we kept it pretty quiet aside from telling my little sister (also named Jen) and her boyfriend Dec on their trip out to California around the same time.
Small aside: I was born and raised in a small village on the outskirts of Manchester, England but have been living in San Francisco for around 4 years now. I love my life over in California, but I miss the people terribly back home.
I have a really close relationship with my sister and I miss living nearby. So it was special to tell them that we were trying for a baby during the first weekend of their trip (FYI: she cried her eyes out, but she cries at a lot!).
After the first weekend of their trip with us, they went to Vegas for a few days, and whilst they were living it up in Vegas, Jen (wife) and I found out that we were pregnant. We couldn’t quite believe it, it all seemed so surreal and we tried many, many tests to double-check and they all came back positive.
Then came the fun part, we wanted to tell Jen and Dec on their return to San Francisco from Vegas for the last weekend of their trip. This was too good of an opportunity to pass up to tell them face-to-face that we were expecting! Who would have thought, one weekend we tell them we’re trying, the next we tell them it happened! (NB: we know we were extremely lucky that it happened so quickly for us as we are well aware of the struggles some people face when going through this same journey).
After telling our immediate family, came the realization that our first child is on the way…
Let the planning commence
Now Jen and I are both planners and we like being prepared. We started putting a plan together starting with the following questions 1) What do we need to do? 2) How do we do this over the next 9 months? 3) How do we get ourselves ready for a baby?
We started with our nursery set up (see picture). Doing this nice and early really got our heads around the fact that a baby was on the way!
We then went on the search for knowledge, spoke to our parent friends and picked their brains about all things they found useful. The outcome: Jen created the best baby registry we could have asked for - Check it out here and steal ideas to get yourselves ready!
She also created a list of all things for Mum that she has found useful. Check that list out here.
Once we convinced ourselves there was a baby coming soon, my mind shifted to try to understand how I’m going to keep a human alive! We dived into books and spent our nights reading about everything from week-by-week baby changes to labor to what to do when the baby arrives! The following were the best:
- What to Expect When You’re Expecting — A great resource for Mum to help along the 9-month journey.
- The Wonder Weeks — I’m told that this is scarily accurate! I’m writing this with our kid at 1-week old, but I’m excited to see how it plays out. Well worth a read to give yourself an insight into your future.
- The Expectant Father — This is for Dad and it’s a lifesaver as soon as you get pregnant. It breaks down what happens month by month and provides great guidance around what your partner is going through and how you, as a Dad, can help along the journey.
- The Happiest Baby on the Block — A great guide ON how to calm a baby and make your life easier once the baby arrives. There’s a fantastic supporting DVD too (Thank you, Anna and Steven!!).
- The Pregnancy Countdown Book — A funny and real, week-by-week guide for Mum’s with useful advice for Mum’s in the trenches.
As with anything, diving into this content starts to make you understand the upcoming journey, but also provides the confidence you need to believe that you will know how to keep a little human alive!
As with all best-laid plans, there were things that we didn’t get quite right and things we learned. Some learnings include:
- Newborn baby nappies come in multiple sizes — Depends on your baby’s weight at birth. We had a lot of newborn size one, but none of size zero!! We had an amazing doula (more to come later) who saved us by dropping some off for us the day we arrived home from the hospital.
- Stock up on Mum’s recovery items — Childbirth is crazy! Mum will be in recovery mode whilst dealing with the biggest life change most people face in their life. Get as much as you can to make Mum as comfy as possible. Check out Jen’s list for some must-haves.
- Don’t overspend on a bassinet — Who knows if your baby will like the bassinet, and you may have to try a few before you find one your new addition likes!
- There’s never enough swaddles/burp cloths — Looking after a newborn is non stop, you don’t want to be searching around for a swaddle whilst your little one is fussy in the middle of the night. Just get lots of swaddles and burp clothes (for reference, we have about 6 swaddles lying around the house at all times for feeding, blankets, spit up and around 3 burp clothes. If you don’t want to do laundry every day, we’d recommend at least doubling this amount).
- More covers for breastfeeding pillows— The Boppy breastfeeding pillow is amazing, but don’t forget some spare covers, as poops can happen at any time!
- Don’t underestimate the power of Ewan — My sister Jen and her boyfriend Dec gave us the best present we received. Ewan the Shushing Sheep. Get yourselves one and don’t look back! It’ll help soothe your little one as you lay them down to sleep and save you from spending 10 minutes shushing your little one.
Other aspects to consider as you are getting ready:
- Decide if you want a doula for your birth — We did and we found an incredible partner in Katie Breen. She was crucial to helping us understand how to deal with the labor process, giving us tips and tricks for how to manage both pre, during and post-birth. Not to mention her triple threat of being a Doula, a pre/postpartum masseuse, as well as a reiki practitioner. I would recommend her to anyone as she helped to guide us through the process of pregnancy and made us much more confident about our upcoming adventure. Even though she had to be remote due to COVID-19, she was a huge support during the laboring process — more to come on this in another article.
- Get a birth plan ready — Have a think about how you want to bring your little one into the world and talk through it together. Write it down, print out multiple copies, talk to your doctor about it, stick one up at the hospital. Getting your team to know this before is important as the birth is a very busy time! Look into the benefits of delayed cord clamping, bath or no bath after birth, immediate skin to skin, circumcision, etc. An example from Blossom Birth Centre is here.
The final bit of advice here: don’t wait until the last minute to get ready. The baby can arrive any time and you may not have the time to get things ready. Don’t plan to be finished by the due date, plan to be finished by 36 weeks. We did this and we’re so grateful after finding out our due date moved forward by a week (we found out at 37 weeks), the Coronavirus pandemic hit (it was tough to get anything delivered), and our little guy, Mason, decided to make his appearance a week and a half earlier than this rescheduled due date. When all was said and done, Baby MJB arrived a full 2 weeks before the date we were originally quoted. More to come on our journey to get the little guy into the world in another article in this publication.
If you’d like to read more about our journey, please see the following articles on this publication:
