Anxiously waiting

Now that we finally have everything in our house set up and ready for when the baby arrives, we have started the patient wait for labor to start. While I still have some concerns about final exams, we are finally at a point where we will be good to go if anything starts to happen. Our biggest concern currently is figuring out who exactly wins the Weiland baby pool given certain days of birth. It is quite the change from a week or two ago.

I have found myself being quite jumpy every time I hear any sort of noise from Laura. I keep hoping that it's a reaction to her first contraction or her water breaking, but that has not yet been the case. Laura has had trouble sleeping through the night and doing activities around the house, so I think she is finally at the point where she wants the baby out, too.

Doctor, Picture

Well, there was another doctor's appointment today, it was the first one that I missed. Stupid classes. It sounds like I didn't miss anything noteworthy, though. The heartbeat was 127 and the doctor thinks we may have another week before anything happens, but there are still no concerns at this point.

Since we haven't had a good picture of Laura up here in a while, we thought it would be a good time to add one. How about we have a little comparison:

The Baby's Room

Due to popular demand (well, the request of one of our mothers), we thought we would post some pictures showing how we are fitting the baby's items into our new house. We put the pictures into a web album for you to look at. Enjoy!

37 Weeks Tomorrow!

We had our first doctor's appointment in 5 weeks today. I had gotten a little nervous that it was so long between appointments at this stage of my pregnancy, but things seem to be progressing right on schedule. The baby's heartbeat was in the 130s, lower than it had been at our previous appointments...apparently that is natural given I only have a few weeks left. The doctor asked if I have been feeling any contractions since our last appointment...I didn't think I had. After closer examination, it appears as if my body is preparing for child birth and I may have had a few mild Braxton Hicks contractions without knowing it. Can labor be that easy too?! :)

Fashion Show

Diaper bags: functional for her, but stylish for him:

Scientific gender prediction

In conversations, we found that many people believe our previous methods for predicting the gender of our baby flimsy and prone to error. Laura's coworkers used this as an opportunity to provide us with a foolproof prediction method. We put it to the test and captured it on video. Here are the results. Enjoy!

Profile: Starting to drop

Well, the baby is getting so big that Laura's belly is starting to droop down a little bit, instead of just sticking straight out. With that in mind, we figured it was time for another update on how Laura's looking:

Active Weekend

Bean was quite active this past weekend. Not only was Bean kicking/punching its mommy dearest, but was pressing so hard that Owen could see my belly move! I was able to feel Bean's extremities through my belly...I think I felt a foot and a knee move across my belly at one time or another. I wanted to grab a hold of Bean's little foot, but didn't want to disrupt a baby at play. I'm looking forward to May when I can hold this little one and see all its body parts that have bumping up against me this past weekend (and I'm sure the weekends to come).

Necklace Prediction

One of my co-workers has had some success in the past being able to predict the sex and number of children a person is going to have by tapping & hanging a necklace over a the person's wedding hand. Yesterday she gave it a try on me, and the results are...4 children in total, first 2 are girls, second 2 are boys. She showed more skeptical co-workers today at lunch and the results were the same. Another co-worker wanted to give it a try and see if it would yield the same results, and the necklace continued to say 4 children, first 2 being girls, second 2 being boys. So, if the necklace is right, we will be welcoming a daughter to our family in just a few short months!

Only 88 days to go!

I need to pay attention to the countdown. The plan was for a wonderful "t-minus 100 days until the due date" post, but that's gone down the tubes. I guess that just under three months will be good enough.