Today we are three months away from Jabberwocky's due date.
Wait a second, WHAT!?
[Recalculating, staring at calendar, counting on fingers, thinking nervously about the state of the nursery, breaking into a sweat, adding 'Attend birthing classes,' 'Find a daycare,' 'Read parenting books,' 'For goodness sake buy a crib' to the to-do-list]
That's right: 8-11-11 + 3 = 11-11-11
Yesterday I went to Target. I got all kinds of cheap notebooks at the back-to-school sale and tried to think of an excuse for buying a backpack. I sure do love new backpacks. I also spent some time in the maternity-clothes section, wandered dreamily through the baby-girl clothes, looked with happy anticipation at My Little Ponies, and made my usual rounds through the dishes, Brewers and Packers apparel, and storage/shelving solutions (anyone else think purchasing storage shelves is a special treat?). And all of this browsing was just to give myself time to ask myself, where at Target would one find diapers?
Diapers were my sole reason for going there. Target's running a deal right now that you can buy two packs of Pampers and get a $20 gift card. So I showed up and went straight to the baby section. Once there I realized I'd gone wrong. I did a visual sweep of the store, pondering.
During my subsequent wanderings I passed about a dozen red-shirt-clad Target employees, whom I stubbornly refused to hail for help. As an expectant mother and a very frequent Target shopper, it seemed impossible that 'diapers' registered nothing in my brain. I pictured the employees glancing down at my six-month-big belly, and raising an eyebrow in silent judgment at my diaper-aisle ignorance. Shouldn't I somehow have found this out earlier? Does 'What to Expect When You're Expecting' have store diagrams with the diaper aisles marked with a red X?
Anyway, I finally found them by groceries, and thus began the even more humiliating task of deciding which ones to buy. Not seeing an advertisement anywhere, I called Anders to have him look up the details for me. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: "So do I get 'swaddlers' or 'cruisers'?"
Him: "What's the difference?"
Me: "I don't know. They have numbers on them but I don't know what they mean. This one says '3' and this one says '4.' Oh here we go: this is for babies 22-27 pounds."
Him: "How long does it take for a baby to get to 22 pounds?"
Me: "I have no idea."
Whereupon he told me to use my discretion, apparently imagining my maternal instinct would be of some assistance (what! it takes me an hour to find diapers!), whereupon I told him I'd just grab the two gigantic packages of 'swaddlers.' When he expressed hesitation over such a large amount of diapers of one size, I began to feel tired, hungry, and inadequate, and asked if I should just forget it. He again left the matter to my discretion, whereupon a $20 Target gift card began to have less appeal than just getting the heck out of the store.
Nevertheless, I DID leave Target with exactly two hundred and twenty-four Pampers, a $20 gift card, and a receipt for just under $100, once you add the diapers with the back-to-school supplies. What moved me to action was simply the sight of another mom-to-be rounding the corner with a shopping cart. There were only three diaper boxes left of the kind I was sure qualified for the $20 gift card. We couldn't both take advantage of the sale. Hardly had she waddled into sight before I snatched two boxes at once and loaded them up in the blink of an eye. Selfish, selfish me.
We played a baby trivia game at my shower a couple weekends ago. One question asked how many diapers a typical baby goes through in one year. The answer was a devastating 3,650. Ten a day. So I realize 224 wasn't much to sweat over.
4 comments:
You can always exchange unopened packages for a bigger size. :-)
My daughter is almost 2 and is just now hitting 22 lbs. Some kids hit it before their first birthday. It's all a guessing game!
Hang on to the big boxes, but I would also suggest not opening them and first trying a small package to make sure that brand/style will work for Jabberwocky. Target is actually a great place to buy diapers to see if they'll work for your baby. I've tried several brands purchased there, and two of them were just terrible on M; Target let me return the opened packages when I said they didn't work! I would feel bad doing that with a large pack, though, since they obviously can't resell an opened package of diapers.
Once you've found a style you like, I highly recommend you buy diapers from Amazon. If you join the (free) Amazon Mom program, you get 15% off diapers. Then, if you use the (also free) Subscribe & Save program, you save an extra 15% and get free shipping! Plus, if you want to return a package, they will pay for your return shipping. Because Amazon already has cheaper prices than the store on some diapers, we're saving something like 40%, and I don't even have to go to the store! It's great!
As an aside, we loved the Swaddlers. (They are different from the Cruisers because of the developmental stage they're for. The Cruisers are built to keep stuff in when a baby can crawl and move their bodies in lots of positions.) Oh, and that many diapers will go faster than you'd think. :)
P.S. Sorry for the unsolicited advice. Feel free to disregard it entirely if it's not something that will work for you guys. Every family has to find the things that work for them and their baby. :)
Sorry...one more thing: If you're planning to breastfeed, I'd suggest a breastfeeding class in addition to your childbirth one. The one we took was SO helpful to me (and Wesley, who was able to remind me of things we learned and encourage me). Our class covered pumping and storing milk too, so that could be helpful for when Jabberwocky goes to daycare. If you're planning to do formula, that's cool too--feeding is another thing where each family needs to figure out what works best for them.
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