Nesting and Resting

Well, I've crossed the 40-week mark, and this baby seems pretty comfortable. Baby clearly didn't want to come on her due date, which is fine by me since I'm hoping to go into labor on Labor Day, which is still another 5 days away :)

This week, I've been trying to practice resting. The last three weeks have been very nesting-oriented, between sorting through the hoarder cave and getting the basics of the nursery together.

measuring the curtains, setting up the changing table, and
hanging blankets behind the glider...which I promptly removed
because the hooks are still not properly secured to the wall.

There's been so much to do, and my energy has been relatively high, so I've really wanted to take advantage of Being Home Without Having Had A Baby Yet. I've gotten together with some friends and tackled a ton of stuff around the house that we'd been putting off all summer while we traveled a bunch. Including moving everything to storage (with the exception of a small pile we've collected over the last couple of days). And starting to post things on Craigslist. And working on this. And building and organizing and purging and prepping.

Our storage unit has no lights,
but it does have lots of our stuff!

And now, I'm on Week 4 of my pre-baby parental leave. And this week, it finally hit me that you're supposed to rest before the baby comes. I started having what I'm pretty sure are Braxton Hicks contractions on Sunday night. They weren't painful, and I haven't had any other signs of labor, but the emotional work of timing them and just going through the "was that one? I think that was one?" for a few hours took more out of me than I thought it would. They continued on Monday and Tuesday, on and off, irregularly, while I continued to knock out a couple of to-do list items at a time. And rest. Occasionally.

But today, I took a nap. For 2.5 hours. Now, I still got some stuff done this morning. Turns out, I had a nice window of about an hour between getting up and sitting on the couch where I felt energized and awake. So I started the laundry and a load of dishes, made breakfast, inflated the labor ball, and (finally) labeled the bins in the bathroom.

So much organization.

And then I ate breakfast, took care of my BlogHer followup emails, started reading a draft of an old college friend's new play, made myself a milkshake, drank the milkshake, and took a nap. For 2.5 hours. 

My brain is pretty fuzzy; when I look around the house, sometimes I feel a little bit like I'm floating. Like the edges are a little blurry, and I'm staring out through a foggy window, just floating around waiting for the next step to start. I'm in a happy little fog, transitioning into the pre-labor world. 

Post-nap happy fuzzies. I think I look more awake than I feel,
but I do feel happy.

My mission for the rest of the week is to rest as much as possible. The other night, when the contractions started, I remember being so grateful that I got to go to bed, and that I wasn't actually going into labor. I was thinking that it was great that I got to go to bed, and didn't have to stay up all night getting ready to push out a baby. Whether that's fear-based or exhaustion-based, I'm going to take that in, and try to listen to my body. 

A friend pointed out last weekend that for all my talk of delegation (and for my ability to do it at work), when it comes to getting the house ready, I'm not so good at just sitting down and project managing. I like doing things around the house. And I want to be involved with getting things done for the baby. I'm a very good rester - I have no problem sitting still and vegging out. But when I'm supposed to be resting, and I know there's stuff to do, it's hard for me to really enjoy it. But I'm trying. In earnest. I promise.

Now who's going to finish the nursery projects...