August 1

July Nursery To-Do List:

• Purchase bedding for crib (bumper, crib sheet & crib skirt)
• Create canopy & hope Robbie doesn't kill me (Update: I described my plan to Robbie & he didn't kill me or think it was horrible. Unnecessary? Yes. But he agreed to it. We've bought the supplies, now we just have to hang it.)
• Purchase/refinish piece of furniture to go on wall with rocker (Update: We've found the piece of furniture we want to use. It is an antique piece that has been in m y family forever, that's just been sitting unused. My sweet parents brought it up earlier in the week. The piece is actually in pretty good shape, just needs to be repainted. I had hoped that I could sand it & paint it, but in typical antique furniture fashion, it has about 13 different layers of paint on it (the bottom 6 layers probably being complete lead-based paint). So Robbie will have to strip it to get to the actual wood base and then we can paint it. Robbie can hardly contain his excitement.)
• Paint rocking chair & have cushion made / pillow recovered
• Decide what to hang on walls (Update: We have everything that will go on the walls, just haven't decided what to hang where.)
• Hang curtains (Update: We have the material and the curtain panels, just have to put everything together and some minor sewing.)

August Nursery To-Do List:

Okay, so July wasn't quite as productive as I needed to be. I've got to really be on the ball for August.

• Finish all of the things not crossed off above from July's list
• Wash all of the baby clothes & blankets
• Actually hang things on the wall

August Non-Nursery To-Do List:

• Clean off our camera memory stick
• Install carseat bases into cars
• Get Jake's school routine down
• Give the house one more good deep clean
• Finish my audits & projects for work
• Have baby (but not until the last week of August please). Not trying to cross that one off early.

Updates:

• We are 30 days away from our due date! At next week's doctor's appointment, they'll do an ultrasound, and hopefully we can schedule the actual c-section date. If she came as early as her brother came, we would have her next week! YIKES! Thankfully, so far, it doesn't look like that's happening.
• I've been seeing my doctor weekly for the last few weeks and having weekly non-stress tests done. So far, everything is routine & looks good.
• The baby is still on my right side. She is head down. Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy down. But she hasn't dropped or anything. Her hiney is up at the top of my belly. She likes to poke her bum out. She seems pretty content & comfortable. 
• I'm not nervous about another placenta abruption happening. My doctor keeps trying to ease any worries I might have about it, but I keep telling him, I'm not really that worried about it. (Maybe I should be??) It was just a freak thing that happened last time. There was nothing I could do to prevent it, so there is nothing that I can do this time around to prevent it. If it happens, it happens. Thankfully, once again, we are only 5 minutes from our hospital. I know what to look for and as soon as I see the signs, we would go straight to the hospital. I pray about it daily and I have peace about it. But let's just hope it doesn't happen again!
• I'm more nervous about what is going to happen after she actually gets here. I hope we've got Jake into a good routine with school. We've not had a newborn in our house in over 5 years, so we are a wee bit rusty. I'm not taking maternity leave with work. I'll take a few weeks of vacation & sick days, but since I work from home anyway, I'm just going to have a flexible schedule for a while (in theory). I work for a small company and a lot of what I do, I'm the only one in our company that handles these things. And I handle a wide range of random things. To try to teach someone all of this that may or may not come up in a 6 or 12 week time period, it honestly is just quicker for me to do it myself. Even with a newborn. The other people in my department for a while will handle the everyday tasks that I usually handle, so that will help a great deal. I did it with Jake and that was a thousand times harder because at that time I was still working in our corporate office and I didn't have a boss. I didn't have an office in our home or any of my files with me. The working from home with a newborn wasn't so bad, but the back & forth was a nightmare. We survived that time, so hopefully we will once again. Or this could be a humongous disaster. We'll see. I do have a Plan B.
• I feel like I've been very Pollyanna this entire pregnancy. I wanted this pregnancy for so long, I truly did not care about all of the annoying symptoms that come with pregnancy. I didn't care about all of the doctor's appointments, the shots, the pills, the nausea, the swelling, any of it. It didn't bother me, I was just happy to finally be pregnant. I've loved being pregnant. Until this week. I hit my wall. I'm fat, swollen & tired. Seriously, my feet make Fred Flintstone's feet look anorexic. It's uncomfortable when I sit for long periods, when I stand, when I lay down, it's basically just uncomfortable to move. Something with the pregnancy is making my right arm tingle. It feels like it is asleep and it's a dull pain. It is extremely annoying. I have so much to do, but yet I am so tired. That's so frustrating. My boss is out of the country for 2 weeks, so I'm handling both our jobs. I had my meltdown Tuesday. (Sorry Robbie & Jake!) I'm better now, but I'm torn. I'm ready to not be pregnant and to meet this little girl. But yet there is so much more to do, I really need her to just stay in & keep cooking. 
• I remind myself that no matter how annoying or painful a pregnancy symptom is, it doesn't compare to the pain I felt each month when we found out we were not pregnant. Or the pain I felt over the 2 pregnancies we lost. So bring on these last 4 weeks. Because they just get us closer to this little miracle that I've cried over and prayed for, for so long.