I certainly don’t presume to answer for anyone else, but to address your curiosity: I had two babies after age 40. When that question came up, Mr. M and I agreed that, unless testing indicated some immediately-fatal defect, we were having a baby. We knew that Downs was a real possibility, but we would have gone ahead with that pregnancy if it had happened, and loved and cherished that child as much as any other despite the challenges. However, I would certainly not judge anyone who chose differently, and I’m very grateful that we weren’t forced to make any such choice. (And we have made arrangements to not take that risk again. We are blessed with wonderful, healthy children, and Tony is getting snipped next week. He figured that I’d done all of the heavy lifting with pregnancy and childbirth and nursing and such, so he’d be the one to have surgery.)
Congrats! Mine is 3 months and change now so I remember all of the stuff you are going through vividly. I would say that the most important thing to do now is practice not stabbing people.
Seriously, every single person you run into is going to tell you all about their horrible birth, they are going to try and touch your belly, etc. And worse yet, once your baby is born Harvard apparently contacts all your friends, neighbors, and relatives who don’t have children and awards them doctorates in parenting so they feel free to not only judge your parenting abilities but to make sobbing, impassioned pleas for you to please just do this one thing or don’t do this other thing with your kid because the way you’re doing it is going to harm your baby! :rolleyes: I’ve literally been chased down the street by a woman screaming at me that my baby was too cold and that I was killing her even though she was wearing several layers in what has been the warmest winter in about 100 years around here. I’ve mastered saying, “She’s fine but I appreciate your concern” while thinking, “You are so fucking lucky it is against the law for me to stab you in your stupid face right now!”
Do you realize he may uncomfortable for an entire day? Man, the hardships we endure for you ladies.
While you practice not stabbing folks, also stand in front of the mirror and practice your “I could kill you and dispose of the body without a second thought” facial expression, if you don’t already have it down. I’m a smallish, mild-mannered, very friendly and polite woman, and no one has touched my belly nor chastised me for not taking proper care of my babies. According to my husband - who is largish and looks scary to strangers - I have the “don’t mess with me” look perfected. It’s handy, especially during the hormone hell of pregnancy and those first post-partum months.
Yeah… and nobody wants to hear about YOUR horrible birth, and you’ll be just DYING to tell people all about it. It’s a rotten paradox of motherhood.
By the way, I had a pretty bad labor. Even my* bad, bad, bad* labor was still bearable and I felt nothing but grateful to the hospital team during and after it. Your imagination is far worse than any reality. And after hearing the words “c-section under general anesthesia”, I really understood the meaning of “elated”.
Congratulations! I don’t have any advice for you, since we don’t have any kids yet (working on it quite diligently, though), but just wanted to chime in with a hearty “woohoo for Doper babies!!”
Congratulations! As the father of a two-year-old, I can tell you that you’re in for a wonderful, but exhausting, wild ride!
Congrats!
I do have one bit of advice that worked for me. We kept the crib in our room, but across the room a bit. Since I was breastfeeding, when she woke me, I’d go to the crib, change her, nurse her in a rocking chair placed near the crib, and put her back, without turning on a light or completely waking up. It made a huge difference, I think, in us both getting back to sleep easily, and when it came time to move her to her own room, she wasn’t used to being right near us.
Also, try to relax and enjoy the ride if you can. It’s an amazing trip.
No advice, just CONGRATS!!! hugs
Congratulations!
Hey! That’s my birthday! You know what, since you will be busy you don’t have to get me a birthday gift *this *year. Considerate it a Baby Shower gift from me.
You’re welcome.
Congratulations!
The book I found most helpful was The Panic-Free Pregnancy by Michael Broder. I tend to be a worrier, and this book looks at various studies and breaks down the risk factors in a non-alarmist way.
Someone on the SDMB recommended Nutureshock: New thinking About Children by Po Bronson, and I enjoyed that - essays on new research in child development on various topics, it goes from baby to teen. My only complaint was the author’s tone was occasionally a little … assuming all parents are sheep, I guess. But overall the information was good.
Just a thought: Perhaps better to hold off on the snipping until the safe delivery of this baby?
Congratulations!
Now take a deep breath for fuck’s sake. 
You’ll figure it out as a you go. I know exactly how you feel about wanting to learn up on kids before the big day comes, but really kids give you time to figure things out. I mean, they just basically sleep for the first week (in which you will learn A LOT).
We did. Littlest Miss is 2.5 weeks old. (Though frankly, given our ages, it’s unlikely we’d try again. Wee One was a welcome surprise, but at 42, I wouldn’t set out to have another.)
Mazel Tov!
I’m a lifelong cheapskate of epic proportions, so my main advice to anyone switching into “parenthood” mode is to NOT go shopping. I mean, sure, get a few things that the baby will actually need. Things you’ll want to have right away. No need to stress and fret about the other stuff. You’d be amazed at how much of this stuff is actually essential. Practically nothing. And you know, if you find that you DO need something? There’s probably a store very close to your house that sells it. And you can go buy whatever it is, whenever you need it, and have it in less than an hour. There’s really very few situations that are impossible to deal with for a lousy hour while someone fetches something from the store.
Diaper Genies (and any of the other knock off diaper-sausage-makers) are a RIP OFF. Just throw diapers in the regular trash. Empty the trash every couple days. It’s really no biggie, and not worth spending $20+ a month in diaper genie refills. Trash is trash. Diaper-sausage-trash is still trash. Goes to the same landfill.
Easy and thrifty diaper changing - use the relatively clean front end of a dirty diaper (the poop generally lands in the back quadrant) to wipe up all the poop with. Then you’ll only need to use ONE wet wipe to get the butt really clean, instead of 10. Don’t be afraid to use cloth diapers for their actual intended purpose, either! Keep some on hand, know how to fold them down to newborn butt-size, and have a couple of those big diaper safety pins, just in case. My main diaper changing station is on a less frequently used kitchen counter near the sink. I had another station upstairs before the baby learned to sleep through the night. No running up and down the stairs every time the newborn needs a diaper, which will be like… ten times a day at first. Seriously. Speaking of kitchen sinks…
Use the kitchen sink for a bathtub when they’re little. It’s waist height so you won’t kill your back leaning over a bathtub. And you can use the sink squirter to rinse off all the soap and get the baby nice and clean. (You thought that thing was for cleaning vegetables?) No need for a special baby towel, either. Just use one of yours to wrap the baby in when she’s all clean. It’s thicker and warmer and bigger and way more absorbent than a baby towel anyway, and you already own one. Clean, wet newborns fresh from the bathtub are super slippery, FYI. (One of the things I found surprising and little scary about bath time at first.)
Newborn baby shoes and socks are totally optional. It is easy to literally own 1 pair (or zero) of each and you’ll just save yourself some laundry and lost sock potential. Her lil feet are going to be (like the rest of her) swaddled up inside a blanket nearly all the time anyway, they won’t get cold, and if you do leave little socks on her, she will find a way to kick her feet at diaper time to get them covered in poop. And anyway, newborns have the sweetest, most adorable little toes that you will never get tired of admiring. And who can admire them if they’re hidden away under socks?
Ahhh… baby toes.
It does go by really quickly.
Or she might have a kid like mine, who basically stayed awake for the first week. Which is why I don’t recommend reading the baby-sleep books.
Congrats to the mothers to be. The world needs more dopers.
Big congrats from across town!!! WOOHOO!!!
Dopers in diapers! I like it.
Congrats, Anne! The most stressful thing you should be doing right now is thinking about names… have any picked out yet?
I can’t tell you a horrible labor/delivery story because I don’t have one. 
Aside from the fact that my OB was a scary woman who insisted on having me induced, labor/delivery was fairly easy for me.
Of course, I did take the um…loser-y…way out by having an epidural. Once that kicked in, things went very smoothly. Most of the time Hubs and I were watching TV (Good Morning America) and at one point we popped in a movie we brought with us (Star Trek: First Contact, one of our faves). He had to look over at the monitor to tell me I was having a contraction because I didn’t feel a single thing.
Really, aside from me being a bit freaked out when I saw the placenta (Did that shit come out of ME? OMG WHAT IS THAT?), I’d say our experience was fairly positive. I don’t think the OB liked it though when I cheered upon finding out my son was a medical anomaly–he was born with an extra digit (sort of). When she told me I was like “OMG really? That is so freaking COOL!”. I don’t think she was expecting that kind of reaction from me. LOL