Rearranging my apartment for the baby – Part I

I am sure you guessed it already. Nesting has kicked in. I cannot stop myself from sorting, washing, redecorating, cleaning, ...

Therefore today I started tackling no 6 of my mat-leave-to-do list. Andi and I rearranged our apartment to make room for our little one and all her wonderful cute little things.

We just have a small 2 bedroom apartment and for our remaining 3 months in Australia we won’t get something bigger, so it was a matter of refraining from shopping (esp. furniture) and trying to come up with clever, lightweight and transportable solutions. It seems to be a challenge at first, but I think in the end these restrains helped me a lot to ‘cut through’ all the clutter that baby magazines tell you are ‘essential’ when having a baby.

Because if you think about it, what you really need are three basic areas:
1. feeding area
2. sleeping area
3. nappy changing area

Because food is such an important and pleasurable part of our life, it comes as no surprise that we started with the feeding area ;-)

The aim was to create a pleasant, cosy, comfortable spot in our living room where I can feed the little one day and night. Plus use as much of our existing furniture as possible. Plus have everything within reach.

1. a comfy chair – with an ottoman in case it feels more comfortable to put your feet up while feeding, we have bought two of these chairs from IKEA about 2 years ago and loved them ever since for watching TV or reading, you can also take off the cover and wash it, which might be an extra bonus with a vomiting child ;-)
2. my wonderful breastfeeding pillow – it has a broad padded strap which goes all around your waist and can be fixed with Velcro, I hope it will be as helpful and comfy with the little one on it as I imagine it to be, I bought it from Target and its covers were pretty horrendous, but cutting up the old cover and using it as a template for a beautiful homemade version was very easy, I even made a second cover in case of needing to wash one
3. lots of cushions in different shapes and sizes – to be stuffed in my back, behind my neck, below the little one etc... I think you cannot have enough cushions to make yourself comfortable and I am determined to avoid the horrible neck pain I used to have from working at my computer at an odd ankle all day.
4. cosy blankets – to be thrown over my knees in case I get cold, especially at night I used to get really cold and it always started at my feet, at the moment I seem to have an extra burner inside me and now my husband is the one who begs to close the balcony door, but I know these ‘inner-heat-times” will be over soon ;-)
5. tissues – might come in handy for spilled milk, vomit or other liquid ‘accidents’
6. food for mum – I am always hungry and happy to nibble on something, I heard that breastfeeding increases this behaviour considerably, so I thought a big jar of trail mix and a bottle of water at hand cannot be wrong, hopefully it will last until the baby is actually here ;-)
7. a (night) light – actually the light looks a lot brighter than it is on the photo, I definitely want to have some indirect light: so that I can have a look at my little one or even read a little once we both got used to the whole procedure, maybe I have to find a dimmer for this lamp though
8. reading material – light reading material like magazines, short-stories,... everything that you can discontinue and restart easily, I have no idea whether that will work at all, but having time to read during the long feeds sound ideal to me at the moment
9. a dottie garland – the only thing I bought new for the feeding area, well apart from the tissues and food & drinks, it is meant to be knitting wool although I don’t have any idea how you could possible knit with it, as decoration it is great, it has a woollen pompom about every 3cm, it is my favourite beachy turquoise , it was dirt cheap (about $3 for 30m) and since dottie is our belly name for the little one, there was no way of not having it.

So that’s it: my feeding area. Anything I forgot? Experienced mums out there, please help me. Is there anything else you would recommend? My nesting energy is still high, so just let me know what I could do/ add/ improve.