Showers of Love and Fear

My baby shower was Saturday and it was a blast! It was a nice mix of friends from work, church, and even online. My friend Raquel, who I originally met on Twitter came and I was so happy to finally meet her face to face!

I had a couple of sets of baby shower invites for work friends, then family and church friends. Here's one I had made by Storkie. It was fun creating it cause it started out totally different but I was able to select the girl's skin tone, hair color, the balloon color. It was a fun, and I have to give Storkie a big thanks for sponsoring the printing costs! Everyone loved them, they came in the mail SUPER fast, and the process was easy peasy! I recommend them for sure!

When it came to what to wear, I had a big dress dilemma. Remember how I was asking advice for choosing one? Well that dress didn't make it in time, I actually still don't have it. But that's what I get for trying to do it as a review instead of just buying it and getting it in three days. I ended up squeezing into one of my pre-pregnancy dresses, but because of the cut my tummy was able to fit under it just fine.

I got lost of the way to the party, and caught in the rain, but once I got there it was so fun to sit back and enjoy.

My husband was a trooper too. He didn't want to be showered but when I got home I put all of our gifts back in the bags and put the tissue paper over them, then I had him open them up all over again so I could see his reaction.

I have to admit, his reaction wasn't what I was expecting. He was more like "oh, cool" where as I was like "OMG THIS IS SO FREAKING CUTE!!" He asked me why I didn't just show him the stuff, but he was a trooper and played along with my demands request.

Later when I was putting our gifts away I had the strangest feeling come over me... Almost a panic about my daughter surviving. I'm not sure if it's because of all of the sad stories I've read or heard about or what triggered it, or what. I hate feeling like I'm being negative but I can't help it, it's hard to describe.

I wrote a post with a shower summary and explaining more of this feeling on my Parenting blog today, here's a part of it:

Friends threw me a baby shower last weekend, and it was amazing. Friends from different spectrums of my life came to shower me with love and advice. Since we live about a thousand miles from both sides of our family, I didn't have any kin there, but that didn't mean they weren't thinking about us.

Friends from work, friends from church, even a friend I'd made on Twitter celebrated my baby with me.

On the invitation to the party guests were asked to bring a book instead of a card with a cute poem:

"One small request that won't be too hard Please bring a book instead of a card Whether Cat in the Hat or Winnie the Pooh, you can sign the inside cover with a note from you. Baby will become very smart, if my advice you do heed, if we begin early, she'll soon love to read."

I guess my friends thought it was as cute as I did because Baby Girl now has SO many books as a start to her collection. Originally I had planned to put all of the books downstairs on our bookshelf but now I don't have the heart to take them from her room. I'm going to get some new wall bookshelves this week.We played the classic baby shower games: Deciphering melted chocolate from baby diapers, and guessing the size of my belly.One thing I really enjoyed was the advice cards women filled out for me. I smiled as I opened them all later and silently stored the tips one by one in my mind.But as I got home and started unpacking my gifts and organizing Baby Girl's room, the strangest, scariest thought came into my mind: What if she never gets to use these?

A sick feeling swelled in my stomach. I didn't want to think about it.

I've heard of women experiencing postpartum depression and having extreme fear of something bad happening to their child. I all of a sudden am questioning myself for taking gifts out of the box, or pulling the tags off of her clothing items, terrified something bad will happen to her before she ever gets to use it...

This was a part of a post I wrote for my Parenting Magazine Blog on Project Pregnancy. You can read the rest of it here.

I'm really enjoying blogging with them and I'm hoping they keep me on after Spawnie's born so I'd love it if you showed some comment love over there! Thank you!