34 Weeks!

How many weeks?  34 weeks

How do I feel?  Energized to get everything finished and ready before this baby comes in six or so weeks.  This week was busy with "grown-up" things like taking a tour of the hospital's birthing facilities, interviewing a pediatrician, installing the car seat, and meeting our fall child care provider.  We were not sure what we were doing during the interview with Dr. Cathy, but she was awesome and asked us a lot of questions and got the conversation going.  Brian's co-worker had given us suggestions for questions and things to look for so that helped too.  I knew I would like Dr. Cathy when she introduced herself as Dr. Cathy and she greeted two of the patients in the hallways by first names.  There are a total of four doctors in the practice, and she believes that it should feel like family and never get too big.  I also liked that the office is open until 8pm each night and open seven days a week, they have rights with Evanston North Shore Hospital and Children's Hospital, there are lactation consultants on staff that will even visit at home if needed, and the parking lot is right in front of the building which means no looking for spots or paying for parking.

We met with Norma Richard, our (soon-to-be-beloved) day care provider, on Sunday.  She comes highly recommended by coworkers and other families at Roycemore, and I understand why.  She knows children and is very smart, educated and experienced with young ones.  She has her doctorate in early childhood education and for a very long time taught at National Louis and mentored their teachers.  Within the last ten or so years she has retired and opened her own in-home daycare.  The pros of the in-home day care are obvious as it feels like a home and a family, the ratio of kiddos to adults is low (8 children, 3 adults), there are consistent adults around the child, and it fits our price point for daycare.  I am also looking forward to advice and guidance from both Dr. Cathy and Norma as we navigate this new world of being a parent.  Getting these two important women in our lives makes this process feel even more real (not like it didn't feel real before with this huge bowling ball in my stomach!).

(Brian here)

As Shelley mentioned, we took a tour of the hospital's birthing floor. We toured with the couples that we've been taking our classes with. The classes have had three other couples in them (one girl and her mother), but for the tour only two other couples were there as one of the couple went into labor a few weeks early!  The tour was great and we are very happy with the hosptial. We'll have our own "birthing suite" complete with full bath, dresser, tv, shelley's birthing bed, and a cot for me. It's not the ritz carlton, but as far as hospitals go, it's not too bad. During the tour we saw the nursery and actually saw the other couple from our class learning from one of the nurses how to care for their slightly premature baby. The crazy thing is that the couple was only a week or two ahead of Shelley so it was a reality check for us that Baby Brown can come at anytime!

We also had some fun installing our car seat, except we picked the hottest and most humid day of the year (so far.) After about 10 minutes and rolling down the windows, I finally was able to get the latches installed with Shelley's direction. However, once I took a step back to admire my (our) work, Shelley realized it was backwards (forward facing instead of backward facing) so we unhooked it and went back to work. The car seat is properly installed now and this week we'll drive to the friendly Chicago Fire department and have them confirm it's installed correctly.

Only six more (or so) weeks to go!  Shelley has just placed a small wager with her father of over/under 37 weeks and 3 days.  She chose over and her father took under so we will see.  I think over too, but this little boy will come when he is wants!