Getting Ready for Baby

We finally have the nursery coming together and most of the essentials purchased .... ahh, relief. Thanks to the generosity of friends and family with their gifts to us, I am feeling much more prepared for this child to come. We still have some more to get and more things to do, but at least we have the bare essentials ready.

The nursery isn't completed yet, but it's getting a lot closer. Thanks to Dave's hard work, the bead board is finally all up (with the exception of one corner we won't show) and the walls are painted. Yeah!!!!!

The only wall decor I've gotten up so far are these cute wall decals. They look much cuter in person, but you still get the idea.


The changing table we got at a garage sale (thanks to my sister's great eyes) and repainted -- looks brand new! The cute butterfly on the shelf will be hung on the wall eventually.

This is me after my first baby shower (in Syracuse). It was a great shower but took so much energy that I had horrible contractions afterward. I think my mom thought it would be funny to take a picture of me trying to get through a contraction. I didn't think it was funny at the time, but I guess it's a good documentation of what the last half of my pregnancy has been like.

This is Dave and me after our Provo shower with the clothes we got hanging on the banister behind us. We have gotten so many cute clothes! I can't wait to dress our little girl. It will be a sad story if we are one of those few who were told they were having a girl, but then got surprised with a boy (it happened to one of my friends). Let's hope we're really having a girl!

And for a quick pregnancy update:

At my last appointment on Thursday, I had only progressed a little bit from my previous appointment - dilated to a 3.5 and 80% effaced. Last night, I was up most most of the night until about 4:3oam with regular and painful contractions, and finally got to a point after about 7 hours when I woke up Dave and told him to get ready to go the hospital. Of course, once we got everything ready to go, my contractions started to become more sporadic so I decided to wait another half hour to see what would happen, and they grew further apart and less intense. Part of me was relieved because I started to have a bit of a freak out moment not feeling ready at all. But the other part of me was disappointed because I am so ready to be done being pregnant.
I tell you, I will never know when I'm really in labor unless something other than regular contractions takes place - like my water breaks or the baby literally starts to come and it will be too late to get to the hospital. I just keep praying and hoping I will somehow know when it is really time.