When Are You Due?

It really is sweet and I actually don't mind answering this question these days, but sometimes I feel like saying, "Saturday. When are you due?" Those who dare to guess insist that I'm having a boy, but during most of my pregnancy, my gut feeling has been another girl. Of course, we'll be thrilled with either.

I realized sometime this week that I have developed much more precise expectations about this baby's arrival than I had with Louisa. With Lou, everyone said things like, "first babies are ALWAYS late," so I mentally delayed her birthday until May 5 or so. Knowing that only 14% of labors begin with the "release of membranes," as hypnobirthing puts it, I assumed mine wouldn't break. But now, I definitely have expectations that this baby will be born around Sunday morning (1 day late) and that it will all kick off early tomorrow morning with a mini-flood. Logically, this is all very silly, because I know every pregnancy is different, so I think I'm working through this on our blog to help shake my expectations. This will help me to just enjoy these days with very little on the calendar and my mom visiting from Wisconsin/D.C.

Yesterday we went for a walk in the morning to my favorite cloth diapering store before joining Nate at work for lunch. The ladies then came home to nap/rest before an outing to Trader Joe's. In the evening, Lou hung out with Belle - a.k.a, A-Da - while Nate and I walked downtown Campbell for dinner and gelato. It was wonderful to be out together and we even nailed down our baby names....well sort of. We actually introduced another variation of our favorite girl name but we did finally settle on a middle name to complement Peter as a first name. And all along, very sporadic contractions that would rate somewhere between a Braxton Hicks and a real, uncomfortable one.

Today we have no solid plans, but could end up checking out a bike trailer at REI (before our member coupon expires on Sunday!), buying more burp rag supplies (flannel and terry-cloth), and picking some herbs or flowers for two empty pots on our back porch. I'm thinking spicy eggplant parmesan for dinner tonight!