Nesting in Week 37

Pregnancy Weekly’s post Nesting Instinct describes the phenomenon of nesting, common to pregnant women. Italicized text is excerpted from the post.

Here is how I measure up:

Around the fifth month of pregnancy, the “nesting” instinct can set in. This is an uncontrollable urge to clean one’s house brought on by a desire to prepare a nest for the new baby, to tie up loose ends of old projects and to organize your world.

Well, this week, I’ve been trying to get everything tied up at work, and have sent several totally OCD write ups to my co-workers outlining my open projects and responsibilities.

At home, I’ve set up the bassinet, done baby laundry, organized all his clothes by size, wrote up a birth plan, and made enough risotto to sink a barge (I AM a barge right now).

Females of the animal kingdom are all equipped with this same need. It is a primal instinct…You may become a homebody and want to retreat into the comfort of home and familiar company, like a brooding hen.

I haven’t really wanted to be sitting around at home, although I am very excited that I now have an excuse to flaunt my primal instincts. Another one of my pregnancy books said new mothers sometimes growl at people. I am also looking forward this.

Nesting brings about some unique and seemingly irrational behaviors in pregnant women and all of them experience it differently.

Irrational? That’s just absurd. Okay, so maybe I cussed out a cashier in a liquor store today, but that’s besides the point. She had it coming.

This unusual burst of energy is responsible for women ironing anything in the house that couldn’t out run them. Being preoccupied with ant killing, squishing them one at a time for weeks on end. Packing and unpacking the labor bag 50 times. Cleaning the kitchen cupboards and organizing everything by size to the point that you make sure the silverware patterns match when it’s stacked in the cutlery drawer. Sorting the baby’s clothes over and over again is a favorite theme.

This might be a problem. I am already really, really OCD. If I get any more OCD, like my friend Kate says, I’m going to have to start spelling it CDO so it’s alphabetical.