Lots and lots of baby updates

I hit a big milestone on Friday. It was June 13th and with my due date being July 13th I was officially one month until the due date. It's amazing to think that in 4 weeks(ish) I'll be done being pregnant and be the mom of a little boy. I'm so excited to meet him and I definitely can't wait to feel relatively normal again. It's hard to remember not being pregnant but the end is in sight!

Our little guy is still pretty active and since he's run out of room I can feel his movements all the more. I'm convinced he's trying to create more space since a lot of times he sticks out his foot and pushes hard and just stays like that for awhile unless I push (gently) back. Not so comfortable but his moving around always helps me feel like he's doing just great. Heartburn's been striking with full force and I've had a bad cough for the last little while but other than that I've been spared a lot of the unpleasantness of pregnancy. I haven't really had any problems with swelling, stretch marks, sleeping through the entire night, back pain, etc. so I have lots of blessings to count.

I had another appointment with the OB/GYN last Friday. I was shown right to the room where she saw me but didn't see her until an hour later. Sitting on a table for an hour when 8 months pregnant is not comfortable so I wasn't very happy about that. It was my luck to be right after some girl who had an emotional breakdown and took the doctor's attention for 45 minutes. Grrr. Seeing the doctor this whole time has been pretty uneventful since there have been absolutely no complications. (another blessing) She even told me last time that I was really easy because there was never anything for her to do. My visits with her rarely go over 5 minutes.

The baby's heartbeat is "happy" according to the doctor and I'm assuming that's a good thing. I don't get told the numbers but it sounded good and strong. Also in good news the baby is head down and I've dilated to 1 cm. It sounded like that was good for a first time mom. With any luck this baby will come a little early. I'm just praying he doesn't come late though I know that's really common with the first.

Also on the baby front Derrick and I took a tour 2 weeks ago of the labor and delivery area of the hospital I'll have the baby in. It felt good to pre-register and see where exactly we need to go when we're feeling a little rushed. It felt funny to be walking around with a small group of very pregant women and their husbands. It was good to hear a little more about how the whole process works. After hearing about some of the different parts of the process I've decided that I'm going for the epidural. I'd considered seeing if I could tough it out for awhile and have the epidural as back up but I'm thinking I might just skip to the epidural. We'll see. My one complaint about the visit was that the "tour guide" kept joking about things which got confusing since I'm so new to this whole thing and had a hard telling when she was joking or really telling things as they were. Yikes.

As a final note, Derrick and I have been spending the last week decorating the baby's room. We decided to do a tropical/beachy theme to the room instead of the traditional pastels. We had fun finding great deals on wooden shades, fake flowers, and other decorations. Because cute baby bedding is so expensive we decided to make some of our own. Derrick helped me pick out different blues, greens and tans from the fabric store. He designed the different panels for the crib bumper pad on the computer and since then I've been creating the patterns and making them. It's been a lot of fun for me to figure out how to do this since I haven't done too much sewing. I've got half of the panels done and I'm really excited about how they're turning out. We'll post more pictures once I finish.

Belly pic at 8 months (the first day of week 37). The background shows how we decorated one of the walls in the baby/computer room. Yea for small apartments.