Even amidst a pandemic, my closest friends offered to throw us a local baby shower to celebrate our little love. I was so grateful that they were willing to open their homes and plan such a special event for us, as so many occasions like this have been postponed or drastically changed altogether. Some of our family, friends, and neighbors gathered together as safely as possible to celebrate this joyous moment and our precious boy, and everything about it was perfect! The theme, the delicious menu and home cooked brunch entrees, the decor, and all of the carefully thought out little details were the sweetest touches.

Once we knew our baby’s gender, I got so excited to begin planning his nursery and choosing the items we would need to put on our registry for him. I had to get an earlier start on our registry as we had a shower being planned by my family for early July, and I wanted to give them options and time to choose something from our registry if they wished. I was about 19 weeks pregnant when the shower took place, but I created my registry through Babylist and started researching and adding items around 14 or 15 weeks. I started with the basics I knew we would need like a bassinet, diaper bag, changing table, crib, baby monitor, high chair, and the obvious diapers and wipes. Then, I began searching for his nursery decor. I didn’t have a particular theme in mind when I started my search, but the idea sparked when I came across this Pehr play blanket and mobile. It was part of their Noah’s Ark collection and I instantly fell in love with the neutral yet colorful and playful animal print. As I started looking for more pieces to add to it, the inspiration all came together and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. As I shared in my Nursery Design post, I envisioned this space as Noah’s Ark meets little explorer or world traveler. I wanted it to be simple but fun for a baby boy. Because we hadn’t announced the gender to my family yet, and I didn’t want to spoil the surprise, I added the more gender specific nursery pieces to a private category in my registry.

After I had the initial nursery design complete and had picked out the basics on our registry, I knew there was so much more we needed or that would help make our lives easier that I was missing. Thankfully, Babylist has a registry checklist you can use to help narrow down your search and categorize all of the essentials through baby’s first year. There is even a short lifestyle quiz you can take to create your personalized checklist. I took the lifestyle quiz and chose the “middle of the road” options--not the bare necessities, but not all of the extras either. This was a helpful tool to make sure I didn’t miss anything that I thought would be useful and helpful for our growing family. The checklist isn’t meant to be the end all be all, but a guideline for creating your registry with what might work best for you and your family. 

​Another tool I used while building our registry was the Babylist product guides. Depending on what I was searching for, I would look up the corresponding guide and research the items from their lists that I thought would be best for us. This was so helpful because there are SO many tools, brands, and options out there that it can be completely overwhelming to decide. I’m sure you could spend months on end researching the perfect item, but you really won’t know until your baby arrives to try it so I chose to do some research, ask friends and family for their recommendations, and go with my gut.
​As such, below are some of the key items I included in our registry and have even received for our baby boy. ​

I hope these tips are helpful for you if you're building your baby registry, or are searching for ideas of well researched and reviewed products.
I can't wait for our baby boy to try them out and to review them once we get to use them!

Love,
​Kimberly

Second trimester doctor's appointments: 
My third doctor's appointment was another important appointment because it fell at the 14.5 week mark, and since I "accidentally" cancelled my 11/12 week ultrasound, I specifically requested a make-up ultrasound. The more I thought about it after my second appointment, I realized that I did not want to wait until the 20 week mark to be able to see any updates of my baby. I know millions of women have given birth to babies for generations without ever seeing them, but this is 2020. Plus, the changes that happen between 6 weeks and 20 weeks is incredible and I didn't want to miss them! I also knew it would give me such a sense of peace to see that everything was progressing properly. When I called and explained the situation to my nurse, she understood and said she would share my request with my doctor. My doctor did approve moving forward with an ultrasound, so I made the appointment. 
When the time came, I went to the appointment alone as I was instructed because of COVID precautions. I met with the ultrasound technician and she took me back to the exam room. She was very kind and explained what would take place during the ultrasound. Then, she informed me that depending on baby's position, we might be able to see baby's gender, and if we could, did we want to find out then? I was so surprised by this and did not expect that to even be an option, but I told her we would love to know! She asked if we would want to find out in the moment, or if we would prefer for her to write it down for us to find out later. Since my husband couldn't be physically present, I called him to tell him the exciting news and explained our options. We chose to have her write it down so we could decide how we wanted to find out the gender together, in person.
She began the ultrasound and essentially performed an anatomy scan at 14.5 weeks. I FaceTimed my husband once she had baby in position so he could virtually be a part of the appointment. We were both so surprised by how much we could actually see and how much had already changed. We were able to see baby's perfect little profile with a button nose, two arms, two legs, two hands, two feet, his brain, his spine, his beating heart, and all of his developing organs as she pointed them out. When she moved towards baby's bottom, she had me look away so she could check and take the sonogram photos but didn't say much. After she completed the ultrasound, she mentioned that everything looked great and my doctor would review the ultrasounds, then she nonchalantly mentioned she was able to determine baby's gender and was going to put it in a sealed envelope. My husband and I were both so surprised and so glad that everything went well--this was just a bonus!