Wednesday, July 15, 2009

It Pays to Be Neurotic

One of my pet peeves when I tell people we aren't finding out the baby's sex is when they say, "I could never do that.  I'm too much of a planner."  Granted I'm an oversensitive pregnant lady, but it seems like the implication is that I have no desire to plan for my child, but will wait 'till it pops out, look between its legs, and shoddily slap together a nursery.  In fact, I'm the planner to beat all planners.  It's just that I can plan around knowing the baby's gender.  Sure, the nursery's going to be green and the newborn onesies will be solid colored, but that's okay with me.

My obsessive planning is totally paying off for us as we begin to hunt for child care.  First off,  I've made an elaborate spreadsheet of 18, that's right 18, providers that we are going to interview over the coming weeks.  Secondly, this past August my coworker was raving to me about her child care center.  They are affiliated with a local university, have great ratios, highly educated staff, and a waitlist that goes on forever.  At that point, we weren't even trying to get pregnant, but being the planner I am, I called to get on the waitlist.  I was slightly embarrassed, as the conversation went a little something like this.

Me: "Hi, I'd like to sign up for the waitlist."
Them: "OK, how old's your baby or when is your due date?"
Me: "I don't know either of those things yet.  I'm not pregnant.  Can you still put us on the waitlist for once I am?"
Them (reluctantly): "Sure.  I think we've done that before."

Cut to this past Monday when we toured the facility.  Afterwards, I met with the administrator and told her I was on the waitlist, but could update them with a due date now.  She pulled out my card and said, "Oh, if you're actually pregnant now, that puts you at the top of the community waitlist."  See, people, it pays to be the crazy lady who calls before she's pregnant or even trying to get pregnant.

Brett and I loved the center and really hope to get off the waitlist.  They give priority to siblings of older students and university faculty, staff, and students.  After all of those people have care, they dip into their community waitlist.  She assured me that they always take at least some people off the waitlist, although they sometimes pick based on gender if their classrooms are getting too imbalanced.  They only start new kids in September, so we'd still have to find alternate care from mid-March when I go back to work to September.  Thus, we'll go ahead and check out the other 17 options.

And now for the rant portion of my post...My dad is pissing me off!  I sent him a link to my baby bump video and he replied that I'll look my grandma soon.  Yes, my grandma who is 4'11" and weighs 210 pounds.  My grandma who has always been obese.  My grandma with uncontrolled diabetes.  Some of his other gems included, "Your breasts are huge and your face is getting rounder."  Yeah, thanks Dad.  It's not challenging enough to consistently puke every three days while knowing that I am gaining weight and girth every second of every day.  I'll try not to let it bother me, but it just seems like horribly insensitive comments.

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