When is she coming...?

The weekend of the baby!

This weekend was Brent and my first real dose of baby-mania. On Friday night her hammock arrived by UPS...

We spent Saturday morning driving around to pick up her stroller at REI...

and the hammock stand from a Japanese baby store...

Saturday afternoon the girls from my walking group threw me a faaaaabulous baby shower in

the park, tripling our previous clothes/hats/bibs/blankets/toys supplies with boxes of their hand-me-downs and a few bags of new things as well! Sat. night and Sunday morning were spent washing, folding and putting away her new items and starting to pack our hospital bag. And finally, the weekend was topped off by our first 3 hr. birth prep class on Sunday evening!

Suddenly her arrival has seemed to go from happily anticipated, to real and somewhat imminent!

Well not imminent, imminent! Yesterday I turned 36 weeks. Officially, that means baby Smerdon Freeman will be considered full term in only 5 days... but her due date is still just under 4 weeks away (27 days as my calendar reminds me).

Now due dates mean different things to different people. Many enlightened prenatal care providers will tell you you really have a due month between weeks 37 and 41/42. Your actual due date is 40 weeks (9 months + 7 days) from the first day of your last period (sorry for Too Much Information) and statistically has a slightly higher likelihood of you giving birth than on the other 27 days of your due "month." But many 2nd and 3rd time moms will "go" early, and many 1st time moms will "go" late. That said, you'll hear tons of stories of FTM's going early and the mother of 7 being induced post-term. So really, it's anyone's guess!

According to my mother, I am destined to "go" late. Perhaps she was late with me, or she just thinks the full-moon on May 9 is perfect timing for her granddaughter's entrance. Since our little watermelon is a little on the small side and seems fairly content in there I tended to agree with her on the slightly late side.

Until today.

As our midwife palpated my stomach this morning, she checked the baby's position again and even confirmed with a quick ultrasoundic glimpse - baby's head is down, way down. She can still roll around, as she demonstrated by rolling her body from my left side to my right side during the ultrasound. But her head is deep down in my pelvis - also called "engaged," which means it will likely (hopefully) be stuck there now until birth. This also means that the pressure her head is now exerting on my cervix will hopefully/likely help it "efface" (i.e. thin from a few inches thick to paper thin before/as it opens) either by my due date, or very possibly, sooner.

So while I'm not going to get my hopes up and will still focus on April 27-30 as her likely arrival time (if not later) there is now an increased likelihood that the dates leading up to the end of April are just as likely as the dates after.

Which brings me to the point of this e-mail: time to start the betting! The Freemans got a bit of head start on this so here are their contributions:

Gavin - April 28

Brent - April 30

Grace - May 2

Diane - May 4

Elliott - May 7

Lois - May 9 (right mom?)

[But don't guess after May 11-14, as that will be induction time!]

So post your guesses as comments and we will keep track! And if you want to guess the same day as someone else, we'll just have to ask for times to see who gets it closer if you're right. And who knows, there could be anything from naming to bragging rights in it for the winner ;-)

Love to all of you from us,

XXx