All baby stores are panic palaces for the woman who hates to shop
Written 12/30
The best thing about Babies 'R' Us is the expecting mothers parking spaces, which I suddenly realized that I could use. The worse thing? The sheer amount of choices and things to try. It's like a playground with torture devices where you can't leave but you are expected to play. Lift that heavy-ass stroller! Fold it in without losing a finger (if you can figure out which button to press at what frequency)! Why are these things so complex?!! Being at the baby store I felt that I might have more success flying an alien spaceship than actually placing a child in a stroller, taking him out, and effectively folding the stroller to go someplace.
I just want a checklist to fill out, an app even, that allows me to click some buttons and then it tells me the top three for me to check out. Then, I want to go to a store, find an attendant waiting, who will give me information about the strollers, show me how they work with all their best features, maybe with some good conversation in there, and then we walk out with a stroller. Instead, I got my hilariously sarcastic husband and I using Youtube to figure out how these strollers work (and he has multiple engineering degrees), no helper, and an achy arm that made me think I need to lift strollers instead of weights in preparation for this baby.
If I was doing this alone, I think I would just invest in a baby carrier and be pregnant or baby carrying for the next 3 years JUST to avoid choosing a stroller.
We looked at cribs, too, the majority of which are these heavy duty pieces of pretty conservative looking furniture. Modern, eclectic style with streamlined structure and cool colors? My people obviously do not have babies, or, when we do, we suddenly return to this longing to fulfill a big furniture in suburbia type dream. Nope, nope, nope. I'm not interested in cribs that are bigger than my house.
In the end, we walked in not knowing what we wanted and walked out even more confused; still, my husband was deliriously happy and goofy and he made the experience fun. That made the experience lovely rather than the torture I expected.
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