While some women may revel in the process of creating a baby registry, swooning over all the cute and little clothes, scanning every item that fits their fancy. I had quite a different experience. I started out hopeful walking into Buy Buy Baby that fateful afternoon with every expectation it was going to be one of the more enjoyable parts of this pregnancy. After all what isn’t great about creating a formalized list so the world will know what you want other people to buy you…because just straight up asking for stuff, well that would be rude. Little did I realize how much I had greatly underestimated the power of pregnancy hormones.

Prior to waltzing into the store that day, Pat and I had discussed our minimalist mindset when shopping for the baby. We are living in a two bedroom apartment and honestly there is not enough room for all the frills (not that I would want them even if we did have the space) Plenty of people throughout history have parented successfully with much less than what our society deems as a “need,” and I was not about to let this pregnancy turn into an avenue for us to acquire more unnecessary crap. Ugh…more stuff to clean and organize. Okay…stepping off the soapbox now. For those of you who haven’t yet experienced the wonderful privilege of shopping at a Buy Buy Baby it is basically a giant warehouse stacked floor to ceiling with all things baby. Ah yes, every new and overwhelmed mother’s dream. I mean no disrespect to those employed there. In fact, I’m sure that as time marches on and I begin to wrap my mind more and more around this parenthood thing I’m sure I will inevitably grow to love this place. That being said…it was poor planning on to begin the parenthood shopping excursion there.

Tensions mounting and heart racing as I walked through those sliding glass doors

As we meandered around the store like hesitant zoo animals who had been set loose in the wild for the first time, Pat suggested we begin with looking at diaper bags. Yeah…diaper bags those seemed harmless enough. I mean it’s more or less a glorified backpack for babies right? Ah the innocence…the blissful ignorance I had. I quickly realized there was way more to diaper bags than picking out your favorite style…so much more. In fact, deciding on a diaper bag is apparently such a crucial decision that the store felt it helpful to have a looped video playing which explained all the different options one can choose from. Here I thought I was just looking for a canvas bag to store some poopy diapers. On that note, why not just carry around an extra garbage bag for all the babies stinky little treasures?

What is that foul smell? No tiny human could create such a overwhelmingly horrendous stench…and they tell me it won’t bother me as much when its my own…I’ll make a hefty bet they’re wrong.

See also: Musings on Motherhood: Sweaty, Swollen and No Place to Sit | Musings on Motherhood: Pregzilla Strikes!

As the color from my face began to drain, Pat could sense the looming fear of parenthood beginning to possess me. Like a good, little husband he suggested that we move onto the vast stroller selection. As I began to follow him in that direction, I didn’t even make it past the diaper cream section before the tsunami of emotions struck. I took one look at the endless sea of strollers and just started crying. Let me tell you folks, this was not like a single tear, wipe it away and hope you didn’t ruin your make-up sort of cry this was an all out, snotty, hyperventilating, definitely need to redo my make-up kind of cry, complete with wailing and squeaking in a pitch only dogs could recognize as an outburst for help.

I tried to play it off like I was trying to rock the overdone, goth, party-girl, too lazy to wash my face the night before look, but to no avail.

In a pathetic attempt to distract myself and other horrified bystanders, I started to aimlessly wander through the diaper aisle pretending to carefully evaluate all the diaper creams, lotions, and baby shampoos for my little in utero, bundle of joy. At this moment I realized my sudden need for hand lotion…random I know, but as I’ve realized by now pregnancy doesn’t bring out the most logical side of me. Plus, my hands were really dry. Naturally I looked around the aisle for some tester lotions, and when my eye didn’t immediately catch sight of some on the fully stocked shelves I simply grabbed for the first bottle I could find. I mean really who is gonna miss a little squirt of lotion? I pumped a little squirt into my palm and immediately realized that this was no ordinary lotion…no unfortunately in my panic to relieve my chapped hands I reached out for the shampoo bottle. Awesome! I responded how anyone would and wiped the palm of my shampooy hand on the shelf.

Why God? Why me?

This little mishap only fueled the wailing and gnashing of teeth, so what does my husband do? Like any stand-up, supportive man would he looked me straight in the eye and in a very matter of fact way said “Welp, okay.” Turned around and head off to play…I mean test out the structural integrity of the strollers. In other words…he left me like a pathetic, hurt animal is abandoned by its pack in its time of desperate helplessness. I poke at him all in good fun of course. The pragmatic part of me wants no undue attention in time of desperation. Hugging it out or worse asking me to talk about it would have only made matter worse.

Naturally, we cut our shopping excursion short that day and did the majority of our registry online.