Assembly not included

When I was nine months pregnant, my feet were so swollen I had to wear sandals (in blustery cold November), I couldn't feel my left arm, and I was physically and emotionally exhausted. Yet, I had to put that damn baby swing together. It took me two days. I was determined that with all the chaos, my child should have a place to swing. Of course, he didn't really care for the swing, but at least he had it available.

I spent other days putting together the exersaucer, play gym, pack-n-play and bouncer. I'm not normally an angry person, but I swore up a storm trying to get that stuff together.

Nemo wouldn't help me put any of that stuff together. He kept saying tomorrow or next weekend. So I finally just did it all myself.

He wouldn't help me register for the baby shower either. I tried pushing him and it didn't work. So I had my Mom go with me, and I disguised it as getting her help because I thought she would know more about baby stuff. (when in reality, both of us were utterly confused - it had been thirty years since she'd used any of that stuff, and a lot had changed)

Nemo's parents bought us the crib and furniture. I couldn't get him to go with me to pick it out. I went with Cruella and I remember being on the phone with Nemo trying to get some input from him. He just kept saying - choose whatever you like. It was incredibly frustrating. We had always made purchases together.

Then when the store called to tell me the furniture was in, it took me another week to get Nemo to pick it up. My friends kept asking me when I was going to be getting the furniture because the baby was coming soon, and I couldn't come up with enough excuses as to why Nemo wasn't involved or excited. It was finally set up a week before I had Lucian. I was so stressed that my baby wouldn't have somewhere to sleep.

The one thing Nemo helped me with was the stroller. Probably because all we really needed to do was remove it from the box and unfold it. I was naive enough at the time that I thought - maybe he's coming around and really trying to help. Ha ha!

This blog has really helped me look back at things and see how messed up everything was. When you're going through things, you can't see it from the outside. I was a single parent from the moment of the insemination, but everyone thought I was married because I was trying to make it look that way.

I've learned too that there is no baby item that I can not assemble and things are not always as they seem.