Diapers and bottles and what else? Oh my!!

Last night, David and I ventured into the baby store to start our registry. Talk about overwhelming! I had done some research on the "big ticket" items like car seats, strollers, and high chairs, so I knew the safety profiles and recommendations for those, but there were so many little things we didn't even know where to start! How many bottles does one really need if one plans on breastfeeding? I know we at least need some because once I go back to work I'll have to pump. Do they make diaper pails that don't require expensive refills anymore? (They do--it just took a while for us to find one). Do we want a swing? A bouncer? Should we register for the next size carseat even though we'll be using the infant carrier for quite a while? How many sheets and towels does one baby really need? Do they make anything that's not gender specific (but not plain white) so that we can use it for more than one child?

It doesn't help the anxiety level when you have all these questions and a husband with an itchy trigger finger who just wants to point and shoot the gun...it was worse than registering for the wedding! At least I had some idea of what I would need there! We're going to go back and add on later, but I think we'll wait until we find out what we're having.

In the meantime, any suggestions would be greatly welcome: what did you find you could absolutely not live without? What did you register for that you ended up only using once or not at all?

16 week checkup

We had our 16 week check up today and had a good report from the doctor. We got to hear the baby's heartbeat today for the first time, which was awesome. The baby seems to be very shy though; he or she doesn't like their picture taken (at the last ultrasound), and they were trying to run away from the Doppler this morning. After the last two appointments, I told David that we'll probably have a tough time finding out the sex at the next appointment.

We finally made a decision on finding out the sex, by the way. I agreed to find out what we're having as long as we don't make it general public knowledge. My parents have said that they don't want to know, so hopefully this way they won't find out. We'll tell anyone who wants to know, but we're asking that they don't spread the information so that it would get back to my parents or anyone else who doesn't want to know. I realize that it might be difficult to keep it a secret, especially if we receive gender-specific gifts, but we'll do our best. I'm not going to stress about keeping the secret though. If they find out, oh well, there's always next time!