The Nesting Instinct Is Real

When I first got pregnant 8 months ago and started diligently reading every book on pregnancy I could find, I was a little skeptical whenever I came to the “What you’re experiencing emotionally this month”-type sections. How could they possibly generalize what every pregnant woman feels from month to month? I was especially skeptical of this thing they labeled “the nesting instinct”: this urge to “nest” like a bird, set up a home, clean, organize, put things in their places, and just generally prepare a place for “baby” (I can’t stand how these books insist on leaving out the definite or possessive article when referring to our unborn children).

But I’m here to confess that, at least with this one generalization, the pregnancy books seem to be right.I first felt it in the middle of my fourth month when my constant nausea was finally gone. I found myself not only cleaning and organizing everything but actually accomplishing major projects that I’ve been wanting to do for years but never found/made the time for: cataloging every book we own (by author, title, pub date, publisher, ISBN, and price—yes, I admit it’s a little overboard!); making a list of all our CDs and DVDs (not quite finished); creating an address table with names, children’s names, phone numbers, email addresses, and home addresses of everyone we’ve ever known and wanted to keep in touch with; finishing my wedding album; labeling and uploading all our digital pictures to the web. I couldn’t believe how quickly and efficiently I got these things done. I’ve been just a planner and a thinker when it comes to these kinds of things. Suddenly at 17 weeks pregnant, I was a doer! It felt great.

But this need to nest really set in when it came time to disrupt my future baby’s home. And I wasn’t prepared for the emotions that went along with it. At the beginning of my fifth month, it was time for my husband and I to pack up our entire household and move back to the States: our first overseas post with the Foreign Service was coming to an end. Now, to adequately articulate the emotions I felt in this process, I have to explain that I was really looking forward to this move: we’d been in Sarajevo for 18 months, and although we enjoyed the city, found the culture and history of the country fascinating, and made a few really good friends, we felt—mostly because the church hasn’t been established in Bosnia yet—lonely, isolated, and empty most of our time there. Our life was never as full and rich there as it had been previously in New York. Then once we found out we were pregnant, the desire to leave the country and be back in the States in time for our first delivery was stronger than ever. I was eager to pack up and come home.

But the weekend came when we needed to prepare for the packers, and I freaked out. “Preparing for the packers” meant deciding what—out of everything we own—would go into our 450 lb. air-shipment to the States and what (everything else) would go into storage in Antwerp, Belgium for the next ten months to meet us in Tokyo (our second post) after our “temporary assignment” in the States. Do you know how little 450 lbs. is? Do you know how hard it is to decide what you will need to live for almost an entire year? I had to stand in front of my wall of books—my beloved books—and decide which ones I could live without for a year; my husband had to choose which of his precious cookbooks would stay behind; we had to anticipate what clothes, shoes, cookingware, linens, and important documents would be absolutely necessary over the next ten months and then send the rest to storage to be completely inaccessible until a year later.

I don’t think I made a single decision that weekend without crying. My husband and I argued. I deliberated for hours over the smallest choices. Here I was, anxious to make this change, ready to move on to an exciting new transition, and I resisted every step of it. Something inside of me reacted so negatively I barely knew how to behave.

I think it was when I was sitting on my bedroom floor trying to decided whether or not I would really need/want to have my first journal with me (the journal my mother started for me with an account of the day I was born and that I took over when I was able to write) that I first recognized my baby’s movement inside of me. And it all became clear. Internally, I was feeling the need to “nest,” and here I was ripping apart my “nest.” Everything that I was looking forward to and doing that weekend conflicted with this very subconscious maternal instinct to prepare for my baby’s arrival. Inside, I was feeling the need to have things settled and stable, and yet my actions were producing the exact opposite results; I was tearing things apart, disrupting the order I had created in my home, and creating instability and chaos. (Incidentally, I decided that my first journal was something I did want to have with me.)

Needless to say, the weekend became easier when I understood what I was feeling. But the feelings have persisted to this very day. Now, at the beginning of my eighth month, I am finally settled into the home that will welcome my first child. I have felt (subtly and internally) anxious and crazed every day until now—anxious to “set up” my life, compelled to “settle” and have things ready. Traveling for a month of home leave in December and then taking the last five, six weeks to find an apartment, furnish it, and create a livable space have been accompanied by this constant sense of urgency. It’s as if nothing else matters but getting ready for this baby, and getting ready means having a physical place prepared for its little existence.

I know that so many women give birth in unsettled circumstances. I have countless friends in the Foreign Service who leave their home six weeks prior to their due date and give birth back in the States, often without their husbands, in temporary homes or living with family. I know tons of women (some of whom participate in this blog) who have moved into a new home just weeks before having a baby.

Has anyone else felt this? It has been such a powerful feeling these last few months, and I’m grateful that things have worked out such that I’ve been able to finally comply with my crazy maternal needs!