Ready and Still Waiting

Today I hit the milestone of 37 weeks!!! Yay! After the fear of miscarrying the first 3 months and the fear of having a premature baby the last 6 weeks, I can't tell you how happy I am to reach this milestone. At my doctor's appointment this week I learned that I am 50% effaced and 1 and 1/2 cm dilated. I was excited about that news because at least all these contractions I've been having throughout the day are actually accomplishing something (other than making me anxious about whether or not I'm in "real" labor or not!). You'd think that after having 3 children I would know when it's time to pack up and head to the hospital, but I feel more clueless this time around than ever before. I think I'm just hyper-sensitive to all these Braxton Hicks contractions due to my preterm labor scare; therefore, every time I have a cluster of contractions I panic and think we need to rush to the hospital. For example, a few days ago I was having contractions 3 minutes apart for over 2 hours...but they never progressed into intense or uncomfortable contractions, so it was just a false alarm. How confusing and contrary to what all the pregnancy books say...GRRRR!!! :} This little guy has just been keeping us on our toes (or perhaps I should say on our knees) ever since he was conceived...God must have very special plans for him :)

Anyway, I am now in the true nesting mode since it is pretty much certain that our little guy will be making his grand entrance very soon :) Here are some photos of the nesting preparations I've been up to lately:

Borrowed a car seat (thanks Laura!) to bring our sweet bundle home in. I had no idea that car seats expire every 5 years! We were planning on using the same one we had used for our last 3 boys until someone pointed out that it is probably WAY expired--which it was. I am so glad my friend Laura had an extra one to lend us so that we didn't have to spend a bucket-load of money on a new one. What a blessing.

Packed the hospital bag...complete with freshly washed baby clothes, nursing gown, clothes, and comfy slippers for me, new binkies, and a warm winter hat to keep baby's head warm and to hide his little cone head if he gets one like his 3 older brothers did :)

My mom helped me repaint and decorate the nursery while she was here (thanks, Mom---you know you did most of the work!). I am thrilled with how it turned out. I love the aviation/patriotic theme which I have used with all of our boys, but this is the first time I was bold enough to paint the walls in patriotic colors. Looking at the room, it's fun for me to reminisce about what I made for each of the boys when they were born. I made the crib bumper for baby Joseph, the wall hanging for baby Michael, a matching crocheted blanket for baby Dominic, and this little guy gets...

...his very own name designed on the wall!

So for you lucky blog readers of mine, you get the first unveiling of our baby's first name (the middle name is still being debated) :) Paul and I chose this name from the beautiful story of Nathanael in the New Testament (Read John 43-50), which is also where we got the unique spelling of the name. Nathanael was one of the first to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, and he was also one of the chosen 12 disciples (in the other 3 Gospels they use the name Bartholomew, which was Nathanael's surname...so Bartholomew and Nathanael are really the same person...just a random FYI to make you Scripturally smarter) :)