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Most of us have known at least one pregnant woman who appeared to become slightly insane as the birth of her baby approached. Some pregnant women start cleaning out their refrigerators at midnight; others decide to rearrange the furniture. One of my pregnant friends was completely obsessed with finding the right valance for the nursery. No matter how many times I told her that the baby would not care if he had valances or not, she ran from store to store with an urgency that made me question her sanity.
This “baby is coming so it is time to act like a lunatic” behavior has a name – nesting. Many people believe that nesting is hormonally-driven. If it is, then adoption must change the hormones, too, because many hopeful adoptive mothers experience the same phenomenon.
Nesting is a word that encompasses every action that you take to prepare for your child’s arrival. This includes activities like —
- Buying clothes
- Creating a scrapbook or baby book
- Reading parenting books
- Setting up the nursery
I went through different phases of nesting in preparation for my child. I bought some items as soon as our home study was completed. There were other items that I waited to purchase until after we were matched with a placing mother. I waited to purchase other things until after the placing parents’ parental rights terminated.
I struggled with what things to prepare when. Nesting helped my child’s arrival to seem more real, but nesting without knowing when a baby would join our family felt empty and painful at times. It saddened me not to have nine months to prepare for our baby’s arrival in joyful anticipation. Instead, we had only a few weeks to prepare, going right into the holiday season, which made nesting more of a frenzied rush than an enjoyable experience.
Since adoptive parents rarely know when their child will join their family, nesting is a different experience than for pregnant couples. Some adoptive parents nest for years; others nest in a frenzied manner over a couple of days. (I know one adoptive couple who had to purchase a car seat on the way to the airport to meet their baby, who had just been born and whose placing mother had just chosen them to parent her child.) Although nesting can be a wild ride for an adoptive couple, remember that nesting is a normal part of becoming a parent.
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great post, I have all ready experienced a little taste of nesting just in preparing for the homestudy, I kept taking it to the “next level” as if our child was coming home in minutes. DH had to say, “Slow down, we haven’t even started the homestudy…”
I look forward to reading the links.
Thanks!
- Faith