37 weeks + 2 days

We're full term!

I've been running around like a crazy person, a veritable project-completion machine. Shopping, returning, setting up, furnishing...basically getting our house ready to feel like a home. Lots of things Jay and I had been meaning to do and just never got around to it (like putting curtains up in the back room) and other things that just seem like a good idea (cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming my car). I tend to wear myself out around dinner time, but I have never had this much energy during the day. This nesting thing is NO JOKE.

Anyway, he's almost here! He has definitely dropped and I was 30% effaced two weeks ago. Haven't had another cervical check, and probably won't be having one ever again, but it was fun to hear that I had started the process toward labor. I have known personally a few women, and heard of many others second-hand, who waddle around fully effaced and partially dilated for more than a week without going into labor, so I don't really care to know the numbers ahead of time. Women can efface and dilate quickly right before and during labor, or efface and dilate before labor and hang out like that for quite some time. Also, the last cervical check I had kind of hurt. So I'm passing on any future exams. He'll come when he's good and ready.

And we think he's pretty close to ready. I keep having preliminary contractions - they feel like menstrual cramps - and they're getting stronger and stronger each day. Also, the baby is really, really low in my pelvis. Here's a fun fact about late pregnancy: you can reach in there and feel your baby's head once he's dropped. Yup. I only have to go in about two inches and his big, round head is right there. Separated by vaginal wall, uterine wall, and amniotic sac, of course. But still - I CAN FEEL IT. Neat-o.

So, when our midwife told us that we could feel the baby's head I was stunned. Really?! Am I dilated? How is this possible? Turns out that a woman's cervix late in pregnancy is actually toward the back of her body, and the baby's head is in front of it, lower than the level of the cervix. When she dilates during labor, her cervix opens from the rear toward the front of her body, eventually allowing the baby's head to pass through. I had no idea. Fascinating.

I'd like to keep waddling around for at least another week, to give him further time to develop. If the early ultrasounds are correct, that will put him right near 40 weeks (even though the official due date is June 9, the early ultrasounds put it closer to May 30). But, again, it's not up to me. Oh, that it were!

Anyway, we're ready. Really, really ready. Excited to meet this little guy, excited to move out of this holding pattern. And I am very ready to have my body back.

Here's me, taken this morning. Hello baby!