When I first found out I was pregnant, I was so excited to get started on, well, everything. I scoured all the baby catalogs and stores and found the perfect nursery set (Old McDonald’s Farm).
I found all the right stuffed animals for decorating. I made some curtains from bandanas. I painted the nursery walls red and used a thick rope for the chair rail. We bought a bed, a dresser and a bookshelf. I bought clothes and stocked up on diapers and filled our cabinets with baby shampoo, baby lotion and baby oil. I would spend the next 30 weeks sniffing the good scents of Dreft, alternated with Baby Magic.
That’s right. I had completed the nursery and was ready for my baby when I was barely 10 weeks pregnant. We had only had one ultrasound and I wasn’t even certain what I was looking at when I
stood in the nursery, holding the ceramic frame that read, “Baby’s First Picture.”
My exhausted husband stood at the nursery door as I pushed out my barely-showing belly as far as I could and said, “What now?”
“I think we’re ready,” I smiled, arching my back trying to look much more pregnant than I actually was.
A few weeks later, a friend had an in-home jewelry party. At this party, a jeweler (actually, she was a very talented bead crafter) designed jewelry while we sat around, nibbled on cheese and crackers and drank sangria—or grape juice for me.
I was strolling through the rows of beads in my friend’s dining room, fingering each one that caught my eye when another party-goer came up beside me. “I take it by your ‘Bun In The Oven’ shirt that you’re expecting.”
“Oh yes,” I smiled, placing my hand on my virtually nonexistent belly.
“You should get yourself a mother’s bracelet,” she offered.
A mother’s bracelet? WOW. How had I, in all my baby prep shopping, not already purchased a mother’s bracelet? None of the pregnancy books had even mentioned a mother’s bracelet. Clearly, I needed new books.
I swallowed my pride and felt my neck redden at the thought of how ignorant my next question would make me appear: “What’s a mother’s bracelet?”
“Well, it’s a bracelet with your children’s birthstones. You can also add names—either their name or what they call you,” she explained, extending her hand and consequently her wrist, from which dangled a beautiful multi-colored bracelet with the word “Mama” strung between gorgeous blue beads. “I have five boys. There was no way all of their names would fit.”
Since I had no idea if I would have a boy or a girl and since my plan was to have four or five children, I couldn’t use their names or either gender indicative colors. Although, I did plan to have a boy, girl, boy, boy and finally another girl. (By the way, I ended up with two girls when I decided to sober up off the mommy sauce and stick with a man-on-man defense.)
I chose some gender-neutral green beads and had a mother’s bracelet made.
But should it say, “Mom?” No, way! It sounded like a grown child phoning his or her mother to make sure she hadn’t fallen in the shower. The thought of my yet-to-be born child living away from me made my cry right there in the middle of my friend’s living room. A bracelet that simply said “Mom” would do nothing but reduce me to a blubbering mess.
Maybe it should say “Mother.” Then I had a flashback to my teen years when I really wanted to go to the mall without supervision, and my mother told me that there could not possibly be any good outcome from that little venture. I distinctly recall huffing the word “Mother” as I stiff-legged back to my room to call my friends and tell them I would not be going to the mall. I couldn’t wear a bracelet that said “Mother” without rolling my eyes.
I could use “Mama,” but my mother had already claimed the name “Nana” and they sorta rhymed. I didn’t want my child to call out “Mama” in the middle of the night but my mind to accidentally hear “Nana” and believe that my baby preferred a grandparent over me. My heart literally broke at the thought. Wearing “Mama” on my wrist would break my heart and cause me to be bitter toward my own mother … um, I mean mom.
Bringing me off my emotional roller coaster, the already-braceleted super “Mama” of five touched my arm. “Don’t worry about a bracelet right now,” she comforted, “I’m sure you’ll be a great mommy.”
Mommy! That’s it! I left the party that evening sporting my gorgeous new bracelet that read “Mommy.”
Twenty-eight weeks later, I officially became a mommy. About six months after that, my daughter started babbling. She called me “Duck.”
Heather Davis is a proud momma of two and a writer. She blogs at www.Minivan-Momma.com.