Week 35: How we nest

Every pregnancy of mine has been paired with some major home renovation project. This is partly due to the fact that we have been working on the house pretty much nonstop since we bought it eight years ago. However, there is something about the urgency of pregnancy, with it’s fixed timeline, that seems to trigger some home-fixing haste.

With my first pregnancy, we gutted the attic to eventually become the master bedroom with the nursery in a nook off to the side. Well actually, we gutted it twice. After realizing that the insulation we had blown in was not going to be sufficient to keep the attic cool during the hot southern summers, we tore it out and had foam insulation installed. It was mostly done before my daughter arrived, but we didn’t move into the space until a few months later to let it air out and to add some finishing touches … some of which are still waiting to be added.

With my second pregnancy, we gutted a room that would become our oldest daughter’s bedroom. The lovely thing about buying an old house is that when you expose the framework, you find all sorts of surprises … this time resulting in us needing to also gut the bathroom. Both projects were finished in time, and my daughter was able to move into her new room before her sister was born.

This time around, another bedroom has been gutted to be used as a playroom. I wasn’t really interested in having another room torn up during this pregnancy, but my husband nests by tearing down walls. While I can shut the door to the construction zone, my nesting concerns are based around the places I will be staring at while stuck on a couch nursing a newborn for most of the day. With some help from some friends, I was able to get the living room painted (something I wanted to have done before my first daughter was born) and a backsplash installed in our kitchen (another ongoing project that has been several years in the works).

As projects get crossed off the list, I feel a little more at ease knowing that although my life is bound to become more chaotic, my environment feels a little less overwhelming. It was also reassuring to read this article on the science of nesting to validate my need for my home to be in order. While it’s still a long way from being finished, our house is looking a lot less like a work in progress these days. On a side note, the kids and I like to be involved in helping when we can, but we leave the potentially dangerous, more chemically involved parts of the process to Daddy.