You guys I was so dumb.

I decided that I needed a mesh baby carrier for carrying Babystar this summer. She was all hot and sweaty in her Beco Gemini last summer, and now she is old enough to have opinions.

I did all my research like a good little mama. I tried on the Moby Aria last year at MommyCon and didn’t really love the fit.  I love my Becos but I read the Beco Breeze was just sort of ok. I planned to try one on at MommyCon DC this year but I’m going to NYC to see Arcade Fire instead. (Poor me, right?) And I plan to wear Babystar at Randall’s Island for the show so I definitely needed wanted to get a mesh carrier sooner rather than later. I read that the Tula mesh carriers were the bomb so I decided to get one of those. Then I saw the super cute ‘Shine’ design (with STARS OMG) so I decided to wait until that one was available.

Tuesday, May 31, 5pm EST. Some of you already know this. Ok, I went onto the website a few minutes before 5pm and refreshed the site until the carriers were there, and put one in my cart. I admit I did take my time checking out, but it was still only like 5:06 when I finished typing in my payment information and I got a message that there was an inventory problem with my cart. Womp-womp.

I was devastated. WAY more upset than I should have been about a baby carrier.

I removed it from my cart and went back to the site. The carrier still showed available, so I tried again. The same thing happened. Are you surprised? No one is surprised, right?

About thirty minutes later I went to the Baby Tula Facebook page to see if something was maybe wrong with their website. Because I am an idiot and I was sure there had to be some sort of glitch. Nope. Apparently they sell out that fast. APPARENTLY I was supposed to keep refreshing the cart until it showed up as available and then buy it super quick. I didn’t know the system. Whoops. And by that time, when I went back to the site, the carrier was actually listed as ‘Out of Stock.’ I had missed it.

Ok, no problem. I’ll buy it from trusty Abby’s Lane. It was stocking there a couple of days later. Guess what happened? Yep. Missed it again.

I emailed retailers to ask about stocking times. I joined Tula in the Know, a VERY helpful Facebook page. I joined mailing lists for tiny boutiques all over the country. I kept missing them! Sometimes by literal seconds!

I saw the $149 carriers listed for sale for over $200 on eBay and other resale sites and I was SO MAD.

But then. Bay & Bee, a boutique shop in Jacksonville, Florida, announced on their website that they would have a few Tula Shines for sale on Friday, June 10, in their Jacksonville shop. And some wonderful person posted that information to the Tula in the Know Facebook page. My 19-year-old son was about an hour away from that shop. And. AND. He was conveniently flying to my house for the summer on the night of June 10. And he loves me. So he drove into Jacksonville to be there at 9am when the shop opened and bought one for me. $149 + tax = $159.43.

Wow. WHO FREAKING KNEW it would be so hard?? Everyone, right. Everyone but me knew. Didn’t you?

Also, I love it.

RAISING BABYSTAR: $10,346.81