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Challenge: Bringing Home Baby: What Do You Wish You’d Known?

Everything Doesn't Have to Be Perfect, All the Time

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When my best friend got pregnant, it was like we both were expecting. We've been friends since the first grade, shared prom, college, apartments, weddings - we've shared our whole lives together.

The first few months, I spent every day poring over the baby care books and sending her emails. We painted the nursery. We picked out baby clothes. We fought for three days over whether a "zoo theme" was stupid. (She won, probably because technically she was the one carrying the baby.)

As we got closer to the due date, she got more anxious. Did she have enough onesies? What if they got the wrong baby monitor? Should she do cloth diapers? She had a notebook filled with lists, a billion page birth plan, I seriously cannot imagine one more detail she could have worried over.

For my part, I was having a sympathy panic attack. I spent way too much money at Babies R' Us. I scoured Etsy for the BEST nursery wall art, the coolest baby hoodie, OMG we have to buy another pair of Freshly Picked mocs.

When I got the phone call at 5 in the morning that her water broke, I dropped everything and booked it to the hospital. 12 hours later, Hadleigh Marie was born. And we were both in love. 

A week later, we were sitting on her couch, surrounded by laundry, totally ignoring the expensive baby pillow in the corner.

She planned and planned, and nothing really went exactly according to plan. But everything was perfect.



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