Nesting

by Liz Jansen, Executive Director

There’s something called nesting or the nesting instinct that occurs during pregnancy. It’s a “burst of energy” pregnant people get in the last few weeks of their pregnancy that “inspires them to clean and organize the house in preparation for baby’s arrival.” (What to Expect, 2019)

As someone with a Type A personality, I feel like I’m in a constant state of nesting, a perpetual desire to clean and organize the house. As a person who is experiencing pregnancy for the first time, I feel like I’m undergoing another type of nesting, an intellectual nesting.

From the moment I found out I was pregnant in late January, I started gathering information—books, articles, podcasts—anything that might prepare me for raising a kid. Except, the information I’ve been gathering hasn’t been the kind you’d assume. I ordered the most recent edition of What to Expect When You’re Expecting and read the first chapter. I picked up Emily Oster’s Expecting Better and skimmed it. I haven’t touched the other pregnancy books friends have given me despite my best intentions.

What I’ve been consuming is information on racism, anti-Semitism, and all of the other -isms and -phobias that continue to plague humanity. By reading these books and articles, by listening to these podcasts, I’m hoping I’ll be ready.

Ready to explain the Holocaust and anti-Semitism.

Ready to explain anti-Asian hate and violence.

Ready for when someone inevitably makes fun of the shape of my son’s eyes, says ching chong to him, or asks where he’s from, where he’s really from.

Ready to explain that, despite all of this, he still has privilege, privilege he’ll need to understand, explore, and keep in check for the rest of his life.

Ready to explain these things in ways that don’t make him hard or debilitatingly angry, sad, or hopeless.

The sort of intellectual nesting I’m doing is rooted in the terrifying reality that there’s so little I can actually do. I will not be able to protect my son from any of this. The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism explores child development and finds that children as young as two begin to grasp and use race and racial (sometimes racist) concepts in play.

Kids learn and experience this shit young. There is no ready.

Pregnancy gives you a lot to think about, prepare for, and imagine. As I reflect on the responsibilities that are awaiting me as a parent, I’m realizing that this intellectual nesting process is about more than my urgent desire to be ready. It’s about my own process, my own attempt to make sense of the chaos and complexity of this world in ways that don’t make me hard or debilitatingly angry, sad, or hopeless. Most importantly, it’s me finding peace with the fact that the concept of ready doesn’t exist. That I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.