35 & 35

35 weeks down, 35 DAYS to go. Yes, just 35 days until my due date, how's that for freaky?! At my appointment last week my doctor said that if I go into labor now she won't do anything to stop it. I realize that first babies are more often late than early, and I've had that in my head throughout this whole pregnancy, trying to prepare myself for the fact that it could very well be March before Henry is born. Hearing that he could technically be born anytime now, totally freaked me out and sent me into full-blown nesting mode!

Which is good because this was the state of Henry's room last about a week and a half ago:

Yeah, how's that for a sneak peak of the nursery? ;) Honestly, this picture makes it looks about 100 times worse than it actually was/is. This was the night after my baby shower, (which I still need to do a post about, I've been a slacker blogger lately), and I was sorting through everything trying to get it organized while husband worked on hanging things on the wall. So the piles on the floor are actually separated into loads of laundry, a pile of packaging to go in the recycling, and things to go to other rooms of the house, (adorable whale bathtub!). Oh, and the big bare spot in the floor was where my big butt had been sitting while sorting everything. ;)

Trust me, it looks nothing like this now! I spent a big portion of last week ironing and sewing:

so his curtains are almost done now. I just need to find some new hardware for the windows so I can get the curtains hung and then hemmed to the appropriate length. All his cute little things have been washed and put in their proper locations, (except a few things that I can't figure out quite where to put and are just folded and in the crib, ha!). I've got to say, the kid has a pretty stinkin' cute wardrobe. Here's one side of his closet:

We got several packages of hangers as gifts, about half white and half blue. My OCD self had to separate them out so this side of the closet has the blue hangers and the other side has white. Otherwise I'd probably have to have every other hanger be blue, white, blue, white... or some other even crazier pattern.

A few random observations about the last couple of weeks:

-I think about food way more than what is probably appropriate. I've never been much of a meal planner, but I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what I'm going to eat next. Like right now, while I'm writing this post I've been clock-watching and counting down the minutes until it's time to start making spaghetti for dinner tonight. It's actually pretty funny to me because I've really not been hungry much this whole pregnancy, (I'm still not and can't eat much at a time), but I have gotten very focused on what my next meal is going to be. The upside to this is that we've eaten really well the past week and are doing well at keeping to our goal of eating out less this month.

-We've been taking lots of classes at our local hospital this month. So far we've taken a class on breastfeeding, car seats, and 2/3 of prepared childbirth. This week we'll finish up the prepared childbirth and take infant safety and CPR and a baby care class. I realize that it's probably overkill to take all the classes, but I really feel like we've learned a lot at each class, and I'm glad we signed up for them.

I really wanted to take the breastfeeding class because it's something that's very important to me that I knew absolutely nothing about, and the prepared childbirth class because I would ideally like to do a med-free birth and I was interested in learning more about techniques to deal with the pain. The car seat class I really didn't think was too necessary going in, (except that we spent 30 minutes trying to install our seat one night and couldn't get it right!), but I really learned a lot! I think the craziest part of it was that they said that only approximately 4% of the car seats in the DFW area are installed correctly! Isn't that scary?!

-I'm up a total of 16-17 pounds. According to my doctor's scale last week I had actually lost a pound from my appointment two weeks before, but I'm sure that was a total fluke, and she didn't seem worried about it either. My belly is still measuring right where it should be, so as long as it's still getting bigger I don't get in trouble for losing a pound. ;)

-This weekend I had some pretty intense back pain that started Saturday afternoon and got progressively worse through Sunday night. We went to a prepared childbirth class Sunday afternoon where they discussed preterm labor and back labor, and I'm pretty sure the instructor had husband convinced I was in labor for a little while. She had a powerpoint slide that had I think 8 signs of labor on it, and because of the back pain and a stomach ache, (from eating pizza and french fries the day before), I met all but one of the criteria. Jonathan kept giving me the side eye while she was going over everything and I had to convince him that I just didn't feel good, I was not going into labor. ;) Obviously I was right because I'm still very much pregnant 3 days later and I'm feeling much better!

-I am still having braxton-hicks contractions sporadically, mostly when I try to do too much or have been on my feet too long without taking a break. I'll tell you what, pregnancy can seriously damper one's sense of independence! I always make a to-do list every night before I go to bed, and usually only get a few things crossed off every day because the simplest things just wear me out too quickly. If you know me well, you understand how incredibly frustrating this is for me! ;)

-My sleeping has gone progressively downhill to the point that it's basically non-existant at this point. On a good day I take three 1-2 hour catnaps. Yesterday I wasn't tired at all until 7:00 in the morning, and still didn't fall asleep until sometime after 7:45 a.m. It was really beginning to irritate me for a couple of weeks, but I've just decided that I'm going to sleep when I can and not feel guilty about it. Trying to fight my body into going to bed at a certain time or get up at a certain time just makes it worse. Oddly enough, despite having not slept at all in weeks, I feel like I have a lot more energy lately than the entire time I've been pregnant. Of course this makes the whole contractions when I do too much all the more frustrating because I feel like I'm ready to go and my body just won't let me!

-Last week I was washing all of Henry's stuff, (clothes, bedding, bath stuff, everything), and there were a couple of items that said "hang dry" on the tags. I pulled out our drying rack and stuck it in front of the window in the dining room and didn't think anything about it. When husband got home from work he asked me what kind of operation I was running, because it looked like I had a skinning rack setting up in the dining room. ;) He's silly, but between the monkey bath wash mitt and stuffed bunny, he might have a point:

And finally, here we are at 35 weeks. You can definitely tell my belly has gotten bigger. No wonder my back hurts!

Jennifer