Is doing a baby registry supposed to be stressful?

Normally, I can shop online with the best of them. Find all the great deals, sort out travel arrangements, and get really nice gifts without much stress or fuss. However, figuring out what we want for the baby has turned into one of the most stressful conversations we've ever had. And having people ask me, "So where are you registered?" makes me uncomfortable since I'm not registered anywhere and there isn't any one store that has all I want.

Part of this is just anxiety about the baby coming and, never having had a baby before, I don't know what I really need. So I've started to ask some friends of mine whose judgment I trust. What gets me frustrated, once I start thinking about everything, is how much furniture, clothes and things a baby needs. After having moved so many times in the past 8 years, I value not having a lot of things.

And how much of it is just going to fill up a landfill and be toxic. Not everyone understands how I feel about this, and I'm not on a quest to convert anyone. I never liked, for example, the idea of changing a baby several times a day with disposable diapers that are made from plastic and turned white by chlorine.

Yes, yes. I know it's more convenient and costs less to buy disposable. And when I have my own, I'll be too exhausted to care. That may very well be true, but for someone who gets a little stressed every time I think about the fact that my apartment building doesn't recycle all plastic number 1 and 2 -- just soda and milk bottles. I think I'll feel too guilty to not at least try to use something more environmentally responsible. Whether we can afford it, is something else entirely.

That alone makes me annoyed. Why is it that the upfront cost for a disposable diaper is so cheap and the price in the store isn't weighted with the environmental and health cost of that dirty diaper decomposing over potentially hundreds of years? Yes, yes. We're relatively affluent, live in big US city, I can afford (financially and values-wise) to feel this way. Blah blah blah.

I don't care. I cringe when I think of how many disposable diapers we're going to use with Tiny Dancer. So since this is something I can get my head around (more easily than which crib to buy), I started to look online.

This morning I found these things called gDiapers: http://www.gdiapers.com/shop/ and I'm willing to give it a go. So the next time someone asks where I'm registered, I'll still not have an answer but at least I know what diapers I want to start using.

Let's see how strident I am 6 months from now...