So as of this past Sunday, Cindy is 38 weeks pregnant with our second baby.  Harper is 26 months old and her guess date on this baby is the 21st of December.  So our days of one child are rapidly coming to an end.  Part of that was sad for awhile because out time with just Harper has been so great.  But I can’t wait to see what God has in store for us with #2.

We didn’t find out the sex of this baby either, just like with Harper.  So as far as us planning for this baby, we’ve really been just organizing, cleaning, and remodeling. Nesting in our household during pregnancy is pretty intense.  Cindy is really laid back during pregnancy and loves being pregnant.  She always says she feels better pregnant than not (minus the morning sickness during the first of this pregnancy).  So most of these two pregnancies, she’s cool, calm and collected.  But then she’ll go from that to a panic about nothing being done and us not being ready so at that point, we kick into overdrive and start getting stuff done.  We were sitting down for breakfast 2 weekends ago and were talking and she just acted off about something (if you know us then you know that if one of us isn’t talking, then there’s something wrong! lol).  So I waited to see if she would offer up any clues, but I got nothing.  Later on during the meal she mentioned something about being worried about having the baby early (this was the day before she hit 36 weeks) and I made the mistake of saying something like “Ohh babe, don’t worry about it, you’re not going to have the baby early…we’re fine.”  AND THEN SHE BLEW UP.  A little add in suggestion for any pregnant husbands out there….if your wife voices a worry or concern over something during her pregnancy, even if it is totally ridiculous or not a big deal…..ACT LIKE IT IS A BIG DEAL.  But I didn’t do that, so I got to feel all the wrath and fury of 36 weeks of pent up hormones and emotion.  This emotional explosion covered pretty much everything she was upset about:  she freaked out because we hadn’t gotten anything done on the house yet, then she covered the fact that I obviously didn’t care about her or the baby at all since I was so flippant about her going into labor early, then she made sure to let me know that even though I work with pregnant women all day I don’t know everything and that I was better with everyone else than with her…. Yeah, it was a good one.  So 15 minutes or so later when she ran out of things to hit me with, then she just sat there and cried for awhile.  Poor Harper was so worried and confused I don’t think he touched his eggs…LOL.  He’s sitting there watching her and then when she started bawling, he goes, “Mama crying!”  One of the great mysteries in this world is the mind of a woman, but even that can be partially figured out…..but the mind of a 36 week pregnant woman…NOT A CHANCE.  I knew there were things she probably wanted done, but had absolutely no clue at all as to what they were or where to start.  In this situation though for you guys again, JUST DO SOMETHING!!!  I should have been asking her what I needed to do weeks ago, but just figured she’d tell me when she had some stuff we needed to do.  Well she told me alright…..lol.

Let the nesting begin!!

So let’s just say I got it into high gear and started working on the house like crazy. We’re having another home birth so everything here has to be perfect for Cindy.  So we remodeled our entire master bathroom, cleaned out and super organized our garage (took my mom and I 9 hours!!), pulled out every article of baby clothes and have resorted them and organized them by size and color, reorganized all the closets in the house, sold several pieces of furniture we didn’t need anymore, ordered our birth kit, purchased the sump pump (I thought it was “sub” pump, but thankfully, Christy Martin set me straight…lol) for our birth pool, pulled out the pictures of Harper’s birth and his video to start showing him so he’s ready, took 4 loads to Good Will and 2 loads to Half Price Books, and Monday night at 10:00 pm Cindy sat down on the kitchen floor and says, “I’m going to reorganize the cabinets..”!!!  And we got our entire fence replaced this week as well….phew!!  The amazing thing about the entire “nesting phase” of pregnancy is that after you knock out the list in the pregnant mom’s head, she’ll totally relax.  That’s exactly what happened with Cindy.  She was so uptight and stressed out about having the baby early and us not being ready but now, after we’ve gotten so much done, she’s super relaxed and calm!! I don’t understand it at all, but I know that it works and she feels amazing so I’m glad we worked so hard to get so much stuff accomplished.

So now it’s just keeping everything organized (with a 2 year old running around that’s a little bit of a job), working on small projects, and waiting.  She definitely could have the baby at any moment but we’ll see what happens.

So dads/husbands….when your wife gets the urge to start changing stuff, or cleaning, or re-arranging at the house during the pregnancy…it won’t make logical sense to you at all but helping her go through that phase goes a long way to helping her mentally prepare for labor.

So moms out there, what all have you guys done during your nesting phases?? Big or small, I’m curious!!

Dr. JB