Having a baby is like getting married....

I have been thinking about this off and on lately and I have decided that having a baby and getting married are surprisingly similar.

1. You get to register for all kinds of cool stuff that you may or may not end up using.
2. People constantly ask you how the planning is coming.
3. People also feel it neccesary to give you their opinions, advice and horror stories.
4.Your husband may or may not be interested in the planning for these events.
5. You get to do all kinds of decorating, organizing etc.
6. Major life changes will occur.
7. As happy a time as both of these things are, it is also super stressful.
8. And the biggest one...we seem to spend a lot of time "getting ready" for the wedding or the birth but don't seem to spend as much time and energy preparing for actually being married or being a parent.

It's this last similarity that I have been thinking the most about. When Josh and I got married we did the typical premarital counseling, talked a lot about being married etc. but most of the planning and time revolved around the one day event of the wedding - what color bridesmaid dresses, what kinds of flowers, picking out my dress, what flavor and style of cake etc. There were lots of things that I realize now we should have done more work around to help prepare for being husband and wife and living together. Some of those things are things like what chores we would do or hate to do, who was going to be in charge of paying bills, what we would do with merging family traditions etc. I know that a lot of things like that are things that most likely need to be figured out as you go a long; but I still think it is true that we spend more time preparing for a party than for the lifetime changes.

This is really freaking me out with pregnancy. Being pregnant has had a way of making me focus a lot on my health, how I'm feeling, what I am doing now to keep the baby safe etc. We have spent time picking out bedding, deciding on how to decorate the nursery, choosing a name and all that other fun, necessary stuff. What we haven't spent a lot of time on is learning about how to raise a child and take care of a newborn. Some of this stuff I know and some of it will come with time but I think there is more I can be doing now. I have thought about how to breastfeed/pump while working. I've thought about what we will do for childcare and how much time I can afford to take off of work. But, I have no idea how to decipher things like sticking to a strict schedule vs. letting the baby be flexible, what we will do about food and feedings as she gets older (baby food vs. making our own), to swaddle or not to swaddle, what kind of vaccines we want to get for the baby or not, how will we handle discipline as Addison gets older, will we use a pacifier and for how long etc. etc etc.

This could be a lot of my own paranoia and need to know what is going. However I am hoping that it will make me more mindful while preparing for Addison's arrival. I'll let you know if I have any life changing revelations about any of my questions....You can also let me know if you have any input on any of those child raising issues....