How to Use Nesting Energy Efficiently
Several Lifehacker employees talked about nesting the other day. You know, this special burst of some kind of fierce energy that pregnant moms can experience makes them collect shit .
One of the employees spent a couple of days on all fours, tearing the carpet and causing knee pain that would torment her for the rest of her pregnancy. Another assembled the bed herself. At midnight. While 8 months pregnant.
And two ( two ) women canned applesauce in the last days of pregnancy; one arrived just in time to go to the hospital and have a baby.
This made us wonder if there are useful and productive ways to harness this nesting energy; then there are things that you look at and think: “Wait, why did I do this?” So I asked our parent Facebook group Offspring : Are you (or your partner) nesting? In retrospect, what was beneficial and what was a gigantic waste of all this magnificent (but limited) energy?
Plan your nesting urge before you have energy
The first trimester is exhausting. If you get out of bed at some point during the day and try to act like a functioning person, you win. No nesting occurs in the first trimester. But one mom in the group thinks this is the perfect time to plan ahead.
“In the first trimester, when I’m exhausted, I make very detailed to-do lists,” says a member of the Kel group. “For example, ‘the magic eraser cleans baseboards all over the house,’ ‘tightens the screws in the spice cabinet,’ ‘rolls up rugs and rugs and vacuums under them.’ All the small tasks that come to mind, but I do not have the strength to complete. Then when, after a few months, I have the nesting energy, and I have time and I drank coffee, I have a list of my whims to follow. Otherwise, I will spend all my energy on the same tasks as usual. “
Cook
This is the main thing. This is what almost everyone recommends, because it’s the only thing guaranteed to make your sleepless new parental self appreciate your pregnant, nesting self.
“I filled our freezer to the brim with breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks,” says Rachel. “It really came in handy when we were blessed with a son who slept from 6 weeks to 7 months.”
Rachel advises that food and meal preparation go beyond simply freezing food. “Make a list of light meals you can make from the pantries so that when you’re brain dead or in the fog, you can still eat,” she says. “Create a formulaic shopping list so that any partner can shop (if it’s not already your responsibility) and nothing will be left behind. That kind of thing is just to think of a few ways to make things easier in the first chunk of time. “
If you are due to have a baby for the holidays and want to be especially prepared, a couple of group members even baked their holiday treats ahead of time and froze them.
“Every year in mid-December, we host an Advent party at our home with seasoned wine and self-baked German Christmas treats. Since my due date was December 5th, I KNEW we weren’t going to have this event, but still I spent the weekend baking various cookies, maybe a couple hundred. At least that’s how we had something at home that could be put in Tupperware for visitors when they dropped gifts, ”Natasha said.
Stock up on bulk items
Stock up on all those paper products, cleaning supplies, bathroom and kitchen essentials before the baby arrives.
“Running to Target for litter with a newborn is not fun,” says Kehl. “Therefore, before giving birth, I check if we have TP, laundry detergent, cat litter and food, detergents and all these household items. (I buy and load in the car and make my husband unload everything!) After the last child, we didn’t have to buy TP for six months thanks to the purchase of two bulk crates from Sam. It was amazing. “
Shasta took bulk buying a step further by saying she “added everything to my Target roster and then used a 15 percent discount coupon.” Yes, thanks, I want to get 15% off cat litter, laundry detergent and toilet paper. “
Do a deep cleaning
When the baby is born, there will be very little cleaning and of course there will be no deep cleaning. If you have the energy and motivation, do a deep cleanse while you can.
A member of the Presi group decided to help with this task and hired professional organizers to help: “I could not stand looking at all the clutter we created on every flat surface, and it seemed to me that I could not handle it myself, so I hired professional organizers. … … Spent a full three days cleaning and organizing, and that was my motivation to create a nursery area. “
Don’t worry about these tasks
There are some things that our wise group members just thought weren’t worth the effort. Here’s what they recommend you skip:
- Driveway car wash . “I’m sure it seemed important at the time, but in hindsight, I think my energy could have been better spent elsewhere,” says Lindsey.
- Overhaul of floors . I think our Lifehacker employee was not the only one to take on the flooring project. Group member Shasta says: “I decided to tear our carpet and polish our hardwood floors when I was 4 months pregnant. I would not recommend! “
- Cleaning the garage on top of the nursery . “I cleaned our garage. Now that I look back, I wish I was working on child protection. It just crept up on us when my son started walking at 10 months old. Then I looked around and saw a large death trap. It took me a couple of months to attach everything to the walls, close all the sharp corners, install locks for cabinets and cabinets, attach lamps to tables, remove glass from the frames that I showed, cover everything, install gates everywhere. It was so overwhelming, but so important. “
- Rearranging the nursery … more than once . “I went to her nursery several times a day before she was born to rearrange trivial things like a book here or a trinket there … move things that we never used, even because I was convinced that I “Optimizing” her room … completely useless, Jamie warns.
- Bake random cakes for no reason . “I couldn’t make the applesauce, but the last thing I made before my son was born was a puff carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting and applesauce,” says Jackie. “That was left uneaten in our refrigerator.”
- Moving at the end of pregnancy . “Any nesting instinct was lost in the chaos,” says Amber, who moved in when she was 9 months pregnant. “We were literally moved less than a week before my labor began. 100 percent DOES NOT RECOMMEND! “