Week 35: The Nursery

The room designated as “the nursery” in our house has gone through many changes in the last four years. The previous owners used it as a bedroom for their toddler. Then it became my office, where I took classes and studied. When I became pregnant with Marley, the plan was to turn the room into an adventure-themed nursery. But when Marley died, the room became a somber museum, a monument to our loss. Her clean and unworn baby clothes hung in the closet. All of the shower gifts were in piles around the room. The door was often closed because neither of us could bear to spend time in there.

Nick offered to share his office with me, so I moved in with him down the hall for a time. I was in the ‘remodel the house’-phase of my grief, so I spent a lot of time in his office learning how to properly paint, build walls, or run electricity to code.

As I remodeled the house, the nursery remained untouched. It was too sad to go in there. When I was pregnant with Maya and Zion, we thought about the nursery and how we would configure it for two babies. But we didn’t do anything about it. So when Zion died in December 2020, the room had remained virtually untouched since Marley’s death in 2019.

In early 2021, we were finally ready to tackle the room. There’s a saying among the power of positive thinking people, “Ask. Believe. Receive.” Part of believing is preparing your space and mind for what you are asking for. I think it’s a bit hokey, but to be fair, it has worked for me a couple of times, so I said hell, why not try it. We were in the process of navigating adoption, and I wanted to create space in our hearts and home to welcome a baby. Plus, part of the adoption process was a home inspection, and we didn’t want to have to scramble to clean it when our home inspection time came. So for the first time in two years, we cleaned and reorganized the nursery.

Cleaning it was sad, but it wasn’t hard. Over the years, there were days when going into the room, we saw “Marley’s things” and days when we saw “just stuff.” The “just stuff” days made it easier to clean and reorganize the room without the emotional weight. The room had become a repository for pandemic purchases. The 20-lb bag of flour from Costco. Lots of toilet paper. After cleaning, it became an organized storage room with all the baby things hidden neatly in the closet.

After becoming pregnant again this past summer, we knew we would have to tackle the nursery at some point. But when? I talked to my other loss mom friends, and many of them waited until the third trimester to work on the nursery. Perfect! The nursery wasn’t something we would have to worry about until we were well into viability.

And then, I was admitted into the hospital at week 25. Our medical team was prepared to deliver me that week. I had to sign paperwork in the hospital allowing them to take care of the baby and get a steroid shot to prepare her lungs for early delivery. When we were discharged, we were grateful that she would get to “cook inside” some more, but things were getting real. Meaning any funny business, and this baby would be born immediately. We no longer had the luxury of waiting weeks to prepare. We had to get started.

It was a good thing we did because it took all of 10 weeks to get the nursery ready. The drywall needed to be repaired, the room needed to be painted, and we needed a new theme – a way to breathe fresh new energy and life into the room. Adventure no longer seemed appropriate. We hadn’t left the country in two years, much less eaten indoors at a restaurant. The last thing we were feeling during this pregnancy was adventurous.

I painted a mural in my nephew’s nursery (15 years ago!), and I wanted the same for our little one. But a mural on textured walls. Could it be done? Yes, kinda, maybe. But with the drywall needing repair anyway, the “easier” solution would be to remove all the texture on the walls and create a flat surface for the mural. So I put my construction hat on again and got to YouTubing. Skim coating didn’t seem hard, just a painstaking process. So after three new layers of joint compound, the room had to be sanded, primed, and painted. God bless Nick because this is where he did a lot of the work. I helped with the skim coating, but the rest was all him.

Then came the stenciling. We bought these amazing stencils from Etsy, and everyone in the reviews said it was a 5-hour to one-weekend project. I think it took us three weeks. But I absolutely love the results, and I couldn’t be more pleased. The room feels fun, light, and mostly-gender neutral with a few feminine touches. It’s no longer the sad museum but a playful kids’ room that, hopefully, our daughter will love for years to come.

Ready for the nursery reveal? Check out the images in our gallery!