The Last Weeks Mindset

Each week brings us gloriously closer and closer to having our baby boy, and more importantly these days, done being pregnant. I am still enjoying it and I would never say I hate being pregnant. I am physically ready to be done sooner rather than later. I am getting tired again, especially during the week.

 

In anticipation of this tiredness continuing, I have started to try to get into the mindset that people had babies for thousands of years without a hospital bag packed, without a perfectly clean house and without everything purchased and ready to go from day one. Honestly though, I am trying to get into this mindset to not stress out about everything.

 

I was talking to my sister this week and realized that I have three and a half weeks until I “need” to have my hospital bag packed (36 weeks). So then I started stressing out about that, and whether that was going to be ready soon enough. She very gently reminded me that we only live 10 minutes from the hospital and that there are a lot of people that can go grab something and that would love to help out. That helped a lot.

 

Then I was just stressing out about going into labor at work, since I plan on working until I go into labor. I figured I don’t want to leave early since you never know when the baby will arrive, and if I was at home I would be that much more impatient for him to make his debut. So work keeps me distracted. I did some research and the chances of going into labor at work are relatively small, the chances of having your water break (especially in the dramatic gushing way) are small and since labor is around 24 hours, there is little need to rush anywhere. The odds are in my favor. I did read people suggest to have a change of clothes and a towel at your work, as well as a stash of maxi pads, so I will plan to have that ready at work at around 36 weeks.

 

Dylan and I (mostly Dylan, since my brain doesn’t work much these days) worked out the plan in case I do start labor at work: 1) Call Dylan, 2) Call our doctor, 3) Take light rail to at least the 1-25 and Broadway station (I know that sounds really dumb to be in labor and get on public transportation… but usually it is the quickest way out of downtown, especially during rush hour, and there are trains every couple of minutes. Dylan has spent like 30 minutes driving in downtown to get to me before). If it isn’t rush hour and I feel fine waiting longer, Dylan can come pick me up. 4) Most likely go home and labor for a while until my contractions get longer, stronger and closer together to merit going to the hospital.

 

The other thing I need ready at 36 weeks is the car seat. This is currently on our registry and my showers are in the next two and a half weeks, so we will wait until after then to purchase it if we need to. I think my showers will help a lot, since that will get me a lot of the stuff I need and then we can figure out what we still want to buy before he arrives.

 

The nursery made a lot of progress this weekend (post will probably be up later today). I know that is one thing that really doesn’t need to be done to have the baby, but I would much rather set it up now than after he arrives. Even if he will sleep in an infant bed in a play pen in our room for the first couple weeks, he will nap in the nursery, so it will be used early on. Remember self, a thousand years ago babies didn’t have nurseries!

Things are starting to come together. I still have freak outs about having three weeks to get everything done (my goal is to be “ready” with a month left), but I just have to remind myself it doesn’t have to all be done.

Keeping this in mind has helped a lot these past couple days. I know that if we were to have this baby today or eight weeks from now, we would still have the same abilities to raise our child and be just as clueless :) Let's just hope those maternal instincts actually exist!