help me
I thought this Salon article, “The baby industrial complex,” was going to be about Buy Buy Baby and the horrific amount of pressure parents are under to buy the right things for their new little bundles. But no, it's about the fertility industry. Which isn't something I'm concerned with.
Apparently some of you don't know about Buy Buy Baby. I thought they were everywhere, but Steve in Portland had never heard of them. Imagine Bed, Bath and Beyond, except everything has something to do with babies, and they have a few toys too. If you don't know what BBB is, well for christ's sake just work with me, it's a big store in the strip mall, just shut up, I'm moving on with the story.
Sorry. I'm feeling a bit testy lately. I might have a brain tumor.
So yesterday we've got one of these childbirth “classes” at the HMO, only it's not really a class, it's just a nurse showing a video. At the beginning of the video, there is a message which goes something like “This video is in three parts. The producers suggest viewing them over several sessions, and to not watch all three in a row.” Which is a strange thing to put at the beginning of your video. So of course the nurse goes out for lunch while we get the entire three-part impact of the maternity equivalent of a driver's ed video. You know, the one where the decapitated bodies are shown hanging from trees because they didn't wear a seatbelt. Only in this video, while there is just as much blood, and it's happening because of something else you didn't wear, it's completely different because it's not something you're trying to avoid, it is something that is absolutely going to happen in the next (in our case) 9 weeks. L has been watching Discovery Health Channel for a few months now, and if you've ever turned it on you know that they show this same stuff five hours a day. So she was relatively desensitized to it all. But me… well I've only been reading skimming a few books and watching Alien a half dozen times, so this somewhat distressing.
So we leave class and head straight to Buy Buy Baby, because clearly spending money is going to make everything feel ok. But there is so much crap there to buy. And we've got a baby registry on Amazon, so maybe someone will buy us something eventually, so we don't load up the entire cart, just put in an order for a crib (8 weeks for delivery… kind of pushing the deadline,) and for some strange reason buy a changing mat with two washable covers. The changing mat is basically a contoured pillow, except it costs twice as much and it's waterproof. Oh and it has a seatbelt. For awhile we're under the spell of the Room Decor Fairy, and come pretty close to buying an 8-piece jungle-animal themed set of valences, pillows, sheets, etc etc, but a breath of common sense washes over me at the last second and I put it back until next time.
I think I was going to make a point with this post, I usually try to, but it's late, I'm tired, so screw it.
Did I mention the valium earlier? I'm saving them up. To take them all at once? What? No, of course not.