Please come and slap me and tell me im over reacting..

[vix1980]

I visited my friends house last night, shes due in the next 3 weeks whereas i am 5 1/2 months pregnant. Anyway she invited me up to look at the nursery and as soon as i walked in it completely freaked me out.

she has the cot up, wardrobe up with a whole rail of baby suits/clothes hanging up, tons of blankets, booties, cardigans, bathing products, nappies, bottles, sterilisers, the whole wardrobe was just completely full, then she says shes got 14 babygro's in her hospital bag to change the baby when needed.

I just got totally freaked out by seeing it all, we haven't even had the nursery plastered yet, let alone bought any furniture, we had the house renovated and just havent the money to do that room yet, it even has floorboards missing and all ive bought so far is a pack of 6 baby grows, and a sleep bag plus a box of nappies. Im just not prepared at all i was awake all last night just thinking about it literally got 3 hours sleep, both mine and dp's families are helping out with the cost of the cot and pram but everything else is down to us, we were in no rush to get the room done let alone then have to fork out for everything else. im just terrified i wont have everything i need .

i know im probably being stupid and hormonal plus tired today so thinks seem worse than they are, i wish id never seen her nursery now, id still be living in ignorant bliss, do i really need all that though??

To be honest, your friend has almost certainly wasted a lot of money. I bet its lovely though.

You have loads of time and it's scary how quickly everything comes together. All baby will need when they are here is baby grows, nappies, feeding of some sort and somewhere to sleep, probably a moses basket. Everything else youc an just get when you need it. The nursery is really only for storing all the baby stuff in the early days anyway. Don't stress yourself, youstill have 3 1/2 months to get things sorted. Thats ages! :o

Thanks, you dont know how much that has reassured me! i was kind of thinking how much stuff she had was just a waste when i saw it all but all the way through shes been advising me what to get, telling me when its all on offer etc and haven't done a single thing so far, so suddenly started panicking that i should of started ages ago when she started telling me.

i do think taking 14 baby gros to the hospital is a bit extreme, i mean dont they sleep in 1 a day or am i being naive?

Please dont worry. Im also 5 1/2 months and I have hardly anything yet. I have a buggy given to me second hand by a relative and a couple of baby grows! The nursery is currently an empty room. Im not planning to get lots of stuff either. I think its very easy and tempting to go over the top and spend a fortune, especially when its your first. Im resisting the temptation and aim to just get a couple of things, each month, till baby arrives.

Well I'd concentrate on getting the floor and walls fixed in the baby's room but after that the rest is mostly window-dressing!

As for the rest - your friend sounds a bit OTT, tbh. But then I didn't do much more than put up the cot, get the bedding for it, borrow a change table and get a blackout curtain - nearly all DS's first clothes were gifts or hand-me-downs, I don't think I bought him any clothes until he was about 4mo!

Babygros - I think the most DS wore in a day was about 5. And that was when his nappies leaked, before I got better at doing them up properly (they were cloth nappies). So yes, naive in expecting one a day - quite likely to be way more than that. But I only took about 3 into the hospital, I think! Possibly more, can't even remember now - but I expected to be out in under a day (was actually in 2 nights with DS).

You'll be fine - honestly you will. Everyone does things their own way and so long as the baby is warm, fed, well-cared for it doesn't matter if it's a different way to your friend's.

I am 37 plus one today and the nursery has no curtains or carpet and cot is still flat packed in box eek! But ive got nappies, Moses basket some baby grows ( which still need washing) and I'm feeling quite relaxed about it. It is my second though so maybe you are a little more relaxed? Baby will be in with us for couple months at least anyway but I would like to get everything ready in next couple of weeks just because we will be so knackered afterwards.

You've got loads and loads of time please don't panic there's no need. Your friend just sounds super duper organised, some people are, others are a little more relaxed and that's fine too. Someone has already said that all u really need is couple baby grows, nappies and maybe Moses basket. It's funny how hormones make you get a whole lot more ready though!!!!

My third baby is due next week OP.

It doesn't have a 'nursery' because it will be sleeping in with me. In fact it doesn't have a cot either because we will co-sleep.

I have cleared a drawer for baby clothes. I have borrowed a moses basket for downstairs naps. I have some baby clothes, nappies, cotton wool, breast pads and Lansinoh nipple cream... and I think that's about it. Oh, and a couple of slings and a car seat.

Babies need to be fed, cuddled, dressed, and cleaned occasionally.

(We bought a whole load of crap for my PFB - travel system, changing table , nursery curtains - fun, but entirely unnecessary. I think my changing table may be the least used piece of furniture ever owned... oh no, that would be ds2's cot which he declined to sleep in even once.)

I had a similar freak-out at about six months, over whether I had enough cloth nappies amongst other things - weird and hormonal.

You do need to be a little bit organised, because otherwise the first days of your baby's arrival will be clouded by not knowing where anything is or how it works, but you don't need a nursery set up necessarily. Your baby will be in your bed or next to it in a basket for the first several months anyway.
You are near the end of your "best" trimester and won't be up for plastering and painting and moving furniture the closer you get to your baby arriving. Have a look at the bare minimum lists on mumsnet and just spend some quiet shopping time buying scrumptious things like tiny baby clothes as a treat, but don't panic buy and leave yourself with a wardrobe of clothes and a nursery full of things before you have even met your baby.
You only really need a car capsule, out of the all the big purchases, and even that can be hired if you have little money. Spend some time on ebay or the mumsnet forum for selling. People love handing on their baby items.
People like your friend spend hours setting up their nursery because it suits them to feel like everything is ready, and for some it is a nice way to ready themselves emotionally for the new baby, but it is not for everybody and it is certainly not the only way. Don't worry that you are not the same.

Are you me?! Went to visit my friend who is due in three weeks- I am 19 weeks and felt exactly the same! Came home and freaked out to my DH who said ' Of course she is organised her baby is due soon. You still have months' That made me see sense!

Thank you, Thank you everyone!!! I know im being stupid and just comparing myself unnecessarily and yet still i do it.

I was planning on putting the basket/cot in my bedroom for the first few months anyway. Hopefully we will of at least plastered/painted and carpeted the baby's room, so when we finally know the sex i can then decorate it to suit it, and i know i dont need millions of babygros, just seeing someone so super organised made me feel totally inadequate but hen again i was never trying to be like her in having everything organised etc..

Just concentrating on getting the room ready for decoration now, pram shopping at the weekend with my mum then the week after cot shopping with my mil, and i didnt think i would but i do feel a whole lot better knowing ill be getting those 2 things ticked off the list, thanks again!

flickstar I said the same to my dp last night, i walked in looking terrified and said, we need to start panicking, we have nothing ready, he just laughed at me and said the same as your dh, still didnt stop me freaking out though!

If it makes you feel any better we only got DS's room painted and ready when he was 6 months old and ready to move into it, doesn't seem to have done him any harm, although it was a bit of a pain having to fit decorating around a baby so it would have been easier to do it pre-birth.

We never had a nursery.

Your friend, lovely though I am sure she is, has wasted A LOT of money. I guarantee it.

One of my main - perhaps my only - key piece of advice now for ANYONE having a baby would be 'Wait and see if you need it first'.

The only things we bought new were a Moses basket (hardly used) and a play mat (rarely used).

Lots of stuff we were given was a godsend, that we'd never have thought of buying ourselves. Most of it was actively better for being secondhand and well used.

Just have nappies, wipes, muslins ready, and a few babygros. You won't even know what size of those you need til he/she is born - our friend laid in lots of new baby size then had an 11-pounder - never left the packets.

Once the baby's here, you'll probably end up sending your DP out to stock up on the things you suddenly discover that you use lots of! - and it will take an hour or so and will be no big deal!

Blimey, your friend sounds very organised, but it also sounds like you've still got time to get ready.

If it makes you feel any better, we've not even got a house yet :( that's making me panic and I'm only 16wks :o

...oh, sort the carseat. That's worth a bit of research and you will (presumably) need it straight away if you give birth in hospital.

Black out curtains are a great idea for your own room too - or if your own are dark that should be OK, not so much for the baby, but you will get tired and need to sleep in the day and if you're anything like me you'll need dark curtains.
DD1 didn't move into her own room until she was about 9 months and we didn't have a cot for her for a while so she was in a travel cot. Not a problem at all.
You just need crib/moses basket, car seat, pram or sling, about 10 babygroes, with 10 vests, cardigans, blankets, nappies, change mat and cotton wool. People will buy you presents so don't bother buying outfits or very much else.

OP - quite right about having the baby with you at night. There's no better place for it to be. That buys you 6 months before you need to worry about finishing the nursery. There's some good guides on MN about what's necessary for before the baby's born ( car seat, pram, baby grows etc) but even more importantly good advice about what not to buy (nappy bins etc). And please don't feel that everything has to be new.

Good luck!

I went to Kiddicare a few weeks ago (trying, alas with no luck, to find infant car seats that would fit in our little car) and there was a whole floor devoted to nursery furniture. WTF? Even if a newborn baby needs its own wardrobe, can't it just get like, an ordinary wardrobe? Do they really care that it's miniature and painted white, I think not. And does anyone actually hang up baby clothes anyway? We were planning on putting the small people into babygros mostly for the first few months, and they just don't hang or fold. They're clearly made for shoving in a pile in a drawer :)

I'm having twins so we tried to do a lot of shopping in the second trimester but even then we didn't go mental - we got a couple of cots from Ikea (£35 each), fitted a blackout blind, bought bottles and steriliser, some babygros some bedding for the cot - other than that we decided to get the pushchair/pram in advance but only because it's such a faff deciding with twins, there's only a couple of options. On my shopping trips I have found that other than the car seat, pushchair and cot, pretty much anything we could see ourselves needing was available from the 24h Tesco anyway.

I can see if money's no object and you've plenty of time etc that doing what your friend did might be quite fun - after years recurrent miscarriage and dashing into Mothercare with my eyes shut to buy my friends' kids presents I did enjoy going in there and going right, we need THIS and THIS and THIS and making a big pile of stuff and taking it all to the till in one go and having shop assistants gush at us and stuff. But then they rang everything up at the till and it was like dear god, did we spend all that? And that was in the sale!

• and we bought a pram way in advance, and then didn't use it - I mean AT ALL - for three months, as a sling turned out to be so much better!

Well used now 2 years down the line obv.

I am 36+4 and nowhere near as organised as your friend. It is my third, but I haven't even got my birth pool back yet (planning home birth), never mind moving forward from there. There are some clothes floating around in a box in the loft but I need to a) locate them and b) wash them. I don't think either of my previous children has ever owned 14 babygros at once, and I say this as someone whose children don't wear anything but babygros (with maybe a cardi on top / vest underneath) for the first 2-3 months or so.

I have several slings, a big bed, some newborn nappies and some boobs. A few clothes washed and I'll be sorted.

Ok right car seats, all i know about them is you have to test them in your car before you buy them, but dont they all fit any car or are the specific to the make of car. why is everything so complicated?

totally agree with buonasera though, i have never seen the appeal of getting a tiny wardrobe for a ridiculous price, when i do get round to getting it, already spotted in ikea for £150 its a huge 1 with 2 rails and drawers at the bottom so will hopefully see it through till the baby leaves home! already have a chest of drawers and the moses basket will be given to me by my friend just in time for when my baby is born, i feel heaps better now !

buonasera I have always wondered that, does anyone actually hang up baby clothes? I could just about understand a wardrobe consisting only of shelves but most of them seem to be just for hanging.