And the Waiting Continues

Well I am now officially past my due date, and I do not have a baby yet...I went to the doctor on Monday, and I had not progressed any further than I was last week, which was 75% effaced and barely 1 cm - although both times the doctors had to force that 1 cm, so I'm going to say I may not even be at 1 cm. Since I do have what we are anticipating to be a "large" baby (she was already at what they thought to be 7 pounds at week 37), the doctor has recommended an induction for the end of this week - if she doesn't come on her own. While I am nervous about what an induction may mean for my goals of having a natural delivery, I think my nerves of delivering a 10+ pound baby naturally outweighs my induction nerves, haha. The good news about my doctor is that if the induction doesn't take - meaning I don't dilate or have steady contractions, she will let me go home and we can try it again next week. Although we are both pretty confident it will take since I am so far along.

TMI Alert! (Do not read this paragraph, if you don't want to know the ongoings of a woman close to delivery) I lost my mucus plug this morning, which means that cervix is pretty much fully ripened by now. The majority of women go into labor anywhere from 24-72 hours after this happens. So far I have still not felt anything more than some light menstrual like cramping (which has been going on since week 37), and I have felt my abdomen "harden" a few times, but I only notice that if I touch it, it never actually hurts or feels like a contraction has been described to me as feeling. I have been told by multiple people that I could be in early early labor, but I don't know what to think. All I know is nothing feels like it's coming and going every 4 minutes which is what I need to be feeling in order to go into the hospital.

I started to stress out quite a bit this morning wondering if I would "know" when I go into labor, since I haven't felt anything yet. It's not that I want to feel pain from contractions or anything, but I think if I had at least felt something at this point, I'd know what to look for, as opposed to my current state of wondering what every little movement and feeling in my abdomen is. I finally settled down this afternoon when I made the realization that since I am so in tuned with my body, it would be pretty hard for me to miss any obvious signs of labor. All I know for sure is that I will (hopefully, as long as the induction takes) have a baby by this weekend, and I am beyond excited to be able to say that :)

Counting Down the Days

My last day of work was on April 8. Since then I have been trying to get everything ready for our newest arrival. I have organized the kitchen, and gone through and tossed as much as I can. I cleaned our bedroom and bathroom, and I even started clearing out/packing our hall closet/storage room for the upcoming move. I know how little time I will have once Ellie is here so I wanted the house to be as clean and organized as could be before she got here so at least the messiness of a newborn would be starting at a clean point and not on top of our old messes.

I think we have finally purchased everything we need for baby Ellie. We didn't get everything off our registry - which we knew would happen. I went through the lists and determined what was absolutely necessary and used our giftcards that we got from returning duplicate items and from generous family members to buy the last few items. Obviously I am sure there things I don't know about yet that I will be needing, and of course there are items we will run out of fairly quickly (like diapers and baby wash) that we will have to continue to buy. But for now I think I'm finally done buying things, haha.

Since I am not working and don't need a car, Jacob has been taking my car to work everyday. His car gets terrible gas mileage and he can sometimes drive up to 300 miles in a day, so it just makes more sense that he drive the car with better mileage - especially since I am not working and therefore not making any money. Well his car is a stickshift and I have never learned to drive one, so during the days I am without a car. Last week I spent a lot of time at my parents house during the day - and I will probably do that this week, too. It has been fun to go run errands with my dad :)

One thing we have been doing is going to home building supply stores and picking out things to use in the house we will be moving into. The guy living there now made some interesting changes to the house that we will not be keeping. So far we have determined we need to replace the kitchen countertops, the kitchen sink (it's bright cherry red!!), the cabinet knobs, a few ceiling fans, and lots and lots of paint. We will not be doing all of this at once, but it makes for a nice to-do list to be working on. The guy who lives there now was given until June 30 to be out, but he has already moved most of his things out, and has turned off the utilities so we are hoping he will be out sooner. That would make the transition from our apt much easier since we want to paint at the house before moving in and we'll need paint our apt once we get furniture out...

There are so many changes coming our way, but I am SOO excited about all of them!

Below is a progression of my baby bump pictures. Jacob's cousin, Becky, made it for us.

Nursery = Done (for now)

So I have finally finished what we will be able to do with the nursery while here at the apartment. Since we are moving in July, we did not want to paint the walls, and we decided not to put up the crib as Ellie will still be in the cradle when we move. Jacob was a trooper about getting stuff done in the nursery today. He HATES hanging pictures on the wall, and that's what he spent a portion of his afternoon doing today. he's the best husband ever :)

I kind of freaked out when I realized how close my due date was and the fact that nursery hadn't been done. I feel much better about it now. I also have my hospital bag packed and ready to go. I think today was pretty productive. My doctor somewhat implied that she believes Ellie is getting pretty big so she requested a sonogram for this coming Friday. I have a pretty good feeling that we will be starting some natural induction tricks starting Friday - but we'll see. Whatever happens I'm getting really, really excited!!

This is going to be fairly short today. Below are the pictures from our nursery and my 37 week picture - I'm full term!!