38 Weeks, Now its all about waiting!

Today sees us 38 weeks pregnant. We turned full term and had our home visit from our midwife last Thursday. After months of being concerned about preterm labor forcing us into a hospital birth I've had a week of knowing that whenever this baby decides to arrive I will be able to stay at home.

As part of our preparation process we had a childbirth class with our midwife, and had a couple of DVD's to watch. This was a wonderful learning process for my darling husband. We then decided as a result of this learning that we are going to try for a water birth at home. The advice of our midwife was to have some trial runs ahead of time. This will then give me positive relaxing memories than I can focus on when it comes to the actual labor. It has also allowed us to figure out how to use our tub in a way that maximises my relaxation ahead of time too. I'm so thankful Rob had the insight to have such a deep tub in the master en-suite.

So far I've had several false starts with contractions. Yesterday they even got to less than five minutes apart for almost an hour before stopping yet again. Then nothing for several hours. It has been this way for almost two weeks, with each time getting just a little more intense than the time before. I know it is just my body gearing up for the real thing, which will happen when the baby is perfectly ready for it to happen. Meanwhile we wait. Wait for labor to start. Wait for our baby to arrive. Wait for our lives to change forever. In waiting we draw closer together and closer to the Lord too.