The home stretch

35 weeks and counting!

Well, we are almost there! We "graduated" from baby classes last weekend and toured the birthing center at Aultman. That made it all very real! We are looking forward to going back there for the big event! They have a very nice facility and we are very impressed with their philosophy and procedures there.

At almost 36 weeks, Mandy and baby are both healthy and getting perfect results at every doctor's visit. We have started going weekly, and they will be monitoring the baby's heart rate and checking for any contractions. The results of the first "non-stress test" were perfect, showing the expected heart rate accelerations and no contractions yet.

Mandy is feeling as good as can be expected, but the discomforts of late pregnancy are starting to set in. She is glad to only have 2 more weeks of work left and although leaving will be sad, she is also ready to take it easy for a few weeks before baby arrives!

We are excitedly awaiting the arrival of Mandy's mum from Australia this week. She will be here for 7 weeks. It has been almost 2 years since we saw her, so we have a lot of catching up to do before the little one arrives! It will be great to have her here after the baby comes, too, as I'm sure we will both be nervous and overwhelmed!

The nursery is complete now, it just needs some cleaning and organizing. We have a lot of clothes and diapers to wash! Mandy had a baby shower organized by her work friends, and everyone was very generous. We now have quite the library of children's books, which we are already reading to him!

We are all hoping that this little guy decides to make his appearance on the early side, rather than being late! But we are on his schedule now.....so......Ready.....Set......Wait!

Click here to see an ever-expanding photo album documenting our pregnancy.  We will continually add photos to this album, so we encourage you to bookmark the link:

https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A8JtdOXmJqDHLp