36 Weeks: Less Than A Month To Go (We Hope!)

I guess we're basically at that point where we need to be ready for the big day, whenever it may come. We almost are. I think we have everything we need for BL, and Susan was kind enough to wash all the clothes/layette for us. I packed a bag for labor, but I still need to pack some stuff for post-partum, I suppose. I don't know what clothes to pack for that, or if I even have appropriate ones! I think I'm supposed to pick things that I don't mind getting kind of ruined... I hope we don't have any complications. We realized that we've really had it easy so far, but that doesn't mean that everything will be cake with the actual delivery, or even with our little girl. But we try not to worry too much.

A couple of things we haven't done yet are our hospital tour and settling on a pediatrician. The hospital tour is this weekend, so then we can check that off the list. We went to a meet-and-greet with a pediatrician last night, and were kind of surprised to find she wasn't a good fit for us. John thought she acted like she didn't need or necessarily even want our business. I didn't like how much she seemed to support formula feeding. Then right as we were leaving she said, "epidurals are a wonderful thing...make sure you get to the hospital in time to have one!" That just kind of rubbed me the wrong way, I guess, since I plan on laboring a lot at home and don't want to have an epidural. But most importantly, we found out that doctors from that practice don't come to OSU, where we're delivering, to do the first checkup, so we'd have to bring BL over to them in the first couple days. I doubt we'll feel like doing that, so we're meeting a different one next week.

Since I am going to try to have a natural birth, I've been very curious about my own pain tolerance. I think it's decent, but now every time I feel some type of pain I think to myself, "so, how much more could I stand, and for how long?" A couple of nights ago I had a pretty bad stomachache (not related to the baby, amazingly) that kind of incapacitated me for a couple of hours. The whole time, all I thought about was how much worse I could handle. Fortunately, the answer seems to be "a lot worse!" I'm finding there's a big difference between pain that just makes you want to lay on the couch and whimper, and pain that you actually can't bear. But despite what this sounds like, I'm actually just trying not to think about or anticipate it too much!