Spain Dad, a baby blog

nest•ing in•stinct
n. refers to an instinct or urge in pregnant animals to prepare a home for the upcoming newborn(s). It is found in a variety of animals (both mammals and birds) and can occur in human mothers as well.

April stopped and set down the shopping bag in the middle of the sidewalk.

“You’re going to have to carry this one too,” she said with a sigh.

Both of us watched a couple in the parking lot. She was pregnant and stood next to the car while he lifted their bags out of the grocery cart into the trunk. Eventually they both got into the car and sped away.

We also had enough shopping bags to fill a trunk, but unlike the couple in the car that was already on their way home, we were still standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Our bags were filled with pots and pans and glass tumblers and fluffy pillows and waste baskets and other trimmings for our apartment, and somehow we had managed to stuff them all in the back of Alleke’s stroller and the backpack I was wearing and the shopping bag that was now sitting on the pavement.

“We need a car,” is what I said to April as I wondered how we would ever get all this stuff down the stairs to the metro station when April was nine months pregnant. I would have to figure out some way to do it by myself.

I was also kicking myself for not being smarter. April had admitted to me that she was nesting, and yet, despite the obvious implications, I had let her drag me and Alleke out to the IKEA at the edge of the city and even watched as she bought all this stuff that I wouldn’t be able to carry home.

I envied the guy with the car. In his world, nesting amounted to driving his pregnant wife to the store.