Kathy: Although, my friends and my family might find this hard to believe, I did get these manic bursts of energy to clean right before I gave birth to each one of my three kids.
Female Speaker 1: Kathy, you actually cleaned?
Kathy: I did.
Female Speaker 2: You guys, I really don't think that it is just about being pregnant, because I didn't have, like, babies growing inside of me, but I was preparing to become a mother, and I think it's a maternal instinct. I really do, that you just want everything to be perfect, and it's like your way of preparing the surroundings for this little miracle that's going to be living with you all of a sudden. I believe that.
Female Speaker 1: That's true. How about this? Not only did I go through it; Nate (ph) went through every phase of pregnancy with me. He went through the cravings, the nesting. He would wake up in the middle of the night to go get honey buns from the grocery store.
Kathy: Yes, but did he gain weight as well?
Female Speaker 1: Absolutely, pound for pound.
Female Speaker 2: Baby weight.
Female Speaker 1: We won't tell anybody. But I have another funny story. One time, I was having a dinner party. Here I am eight months pregnant, waddling to the door. I'm happy and welcoming our guest. Nate has this look on his face. So I say, "Nate, what's wrong? We're having a dinner party." He, like, waddles up the stairs, plops down on the couch, and he says, "I can't wait to have this baby."
Dr. Lana Wertz: Well, nesting is usually defined as an increased burst of energy prior to going into labor. A lot of moms will experience it or describe it as maybe they clean their whole house two days prior to labor so that they knew that something was going to happen.
Dianna Harris: Well, I've always been a real big cleaner and organizer, but I was really obsessed with having everything organized. I had to have his clothes in the drawers by the sizes, like all the newborns in one drawer. And in the next drawer had to have all the zero to three. I had everything folded and just really organized in his room.
Tracy Panan: Well, I think anytime you're expecting something that you've never expected in your whole life, you start to prepare a lot of things in your house.
Dr. Lana Wertz: Clean the house; clean all the baby's clothes, clean the nursery. Many things are focused on the baby's room.
Tracy Panan: The first thing I did was get the crib, get the dresser. And those took like six to eight weeks to get. So I was a little worried about that. And then I basically stocked up my house with diapers and baby wipes, clothes. I didn't actually know what I was having, so I bought a little bit of everything just to be on the safe side, a little bit of pink and a little bit of blue.
Patty Yelton: I want to have the house clean. I want to have the refrigerator cleaned out. I want to have things stocked. I want to make sure the washing's done, the floors are clean. It is a well-known fact that you do. It's something where your body, the hormone surges in your body. You have a release of progesterone at that point when you get close to going into labor. And for whatever reason, your body is just telling you, "I have to have things done." It's something we can't quantify; we can't qualify. There's probably no test that can be done to show it. But we just know innately that our body's saying, "I want everything to be perfect."
Renee Wiltrakis: I definitely had nesting habits in that before he was born, I had his nursery ready. I painted the room. Well, my husband painted the room. We had the crib set up. We had all the diapers in place. We had everything washed. We had everything cleaned.
Tanya Lee: Did a lot of vacuuming. And we're talking, on hands and knees, in the little crevices of the room. Also, a lot of dusting, clean other room just could not be sterile enough. So I had to do a lot of dusting, a lot of alcohol on the counters and that sort of thing.
Female Speaker 3: At the end, I remember getting to the point where I was so ready for him to come, I started cleaning my baseboards. That was pretty much. I knew that he was on his way, because all the girls were telling me at work, they were saying, "Well, you'll know. You'll know." And I was like, "Well, I'm scrubbing the baseboards. Is that a sign?" Like, that's definitely-- He thinks that's funny too.
Tanya Lee: I did prepare the nursery well. I had all the lamps and curtains along with a basinet and crib set. That was all done.
Patty Yelton: Nesting, you just feel that everything has to get done before you have the baby. For whatever reason, you want everything to be perfect. You know this is the one time in your life that you have a little bit of control over because you may not have complete control over your delivery.
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