When I first learned I was pregnant I was warned about all the people who would want to approach me and rub by growing Buddha belly. They would tell me about their horrific 6 day labors and their tragic distant relative who lost her life, her baby, her partner or some combination thereof as a casualty of the process. And it was largely true. As my circumference increased, so did strangers’ curiosity… and their offers to help.
I am not talking about offers to babysit Saturday night (never happened) or a willingness to hold open doors or haul groceries (happened a lot). Nope. Complete strangers offered me their cast-offs. At first I was offended. Most maternity clothes are very unflattering, but did I look destitute? As I struggled to heave my wobbly self off the couch for basic necessities like using the bathroom, I just didn’t have the energy to stand at the sink to style my hair. Turning the steering wheel in the car was a challenge, too. The steering wheel sort of edged into my tummy. It made it nearly impossible to find the right eyeshadow and blush sitting on the passenger seat, so I was too big even to put on makeup.
Now that my son is older I have a bunch of baby gear he no longer needs. So you know what I do? I stalk pregnant women. I do. I ask them if they are having a boy or a girl. If it is a boy, I feel like I hit the jackpot. I know I have a shot at unloading the blue themed blankies and rolling bassinet. The quest to find good homes for perfectly good secondhand items is difficult. It is the conspiracy of Consumer Reports and Target.
Consumer Reports has everyone afraid to use secondhand baby equipment. We spend $5 billion a year on car seats because we are cautioned against using one of unknown etiology. This is true of cribs, bassinets, strollers, and pretty much every other thing we rely on to save our backs when hauling around our little bundles of joy. Target can rescue us. We host baby showers to guilt people who don’t really like us into procuring all the above referenced items for the new arrival. Big box stores – like Target – make it easy to select all sorts of goodies without shame. $200 stroller? Put it on the registry. $150 car seat? Put it on the registry. $20 onesie with less fabric than my $2 pair of panties? Put it on the registry. There is such a glut of stuff that by the time the kid is born, we have ten boxes of newborn diapers, enough blankets to cover every homeless person in town and so many clothes they are practically disposable. This is fine because you don’t really have time to do laundry anyway once the kid comes.
A lot of things I had for my son went unused. I would like to see someone save a bit of money and haul it off for me. Ebay has been a lifesaver – I have disposed of countless pieces of my son’s precious infancy on the site. But nothing beats giving a boppy pillow to a young lady I just met in the store when she has a baby on board. So watch out for me, all expectant moms, because I still have a bouncy seat and a slew of sneakers to unload. And I really just want to help.
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