Bedroom as Birth Room

So as I had written about earlier, one of the things we accomplished while my Mom was visiting me was to finish getting our bedroom ready for the birth and fully convert it to a "birth room".

Here's our birthing room!
We cleared off our dressers and moved them into the far end of the room so that there would be room for the labor/birth tub and for all of us to walk around it comfortably.

And here's our bed and cradle:
And a close-up of our cradle:

James' sister gave it to us, it was hand-made in the 80's. The mattress and sheets were custom ordered since the dimensions are 12 inches by 31 inches . . . ;-)

And here's a close up of some of our birth supplies:

As you can see, there are two sets of sheets--in between them is a plastic mattress cover and two plastic pillow covers. The plan for when I go into labor is to make the bed and pillows with the white and gray sheets, then to cover the mattress and pillows with the plastic covers, and then to make the bed again (over these things) with the red sheets that I will labor and birth on. After the birth is over, the red sheets will be taken off to be washed, the plastic cover will be taken off, and wahlah, our bed will be freshly made for us to lay down on. :-)

In the laundry tub there, you can see some towels--since I'll be laboring and possibly giving birth in the tub, I'll want the towels for if I want to get out of the water.

In the bottom of the laundry tub, which you can't see, are things like: tissues, paper towels, hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol, ziplock bags (for the placenta, fun times), pads, etc.

Here's the other half of our birth supplies:
Here you see the hose which will attach to our shower and run into the birth tub when it is time to fill it. Then we have bleach for cleaning/sanitizing. In one of the paper bags there are 8-10 receiving blankets, and in the other paper bag is baby James' first outfit (white T-shirt, white hats, white socks, cloth diaper, and receiving blanket to be swaddled in). These two paper bags will be placed in the oven to warm when the birth is imminent, so that when he is born, he can get wrapped right away in warm blankets and then dressed in warm clothes.

Last but not least is our birth kit on the right there in the cardboard box. We just ordered this in the mail from a birth supplies distributor at the direction of our midwives. It has a variety of fun things in it--gauze pads, absorbent "chucks" pads, our birth certificate and footprinting kit, rubber gloves, etc. On top of the birth kit is the plastic birth tub liner.

So basically we are ready to go!

We probably have about five minor things we are still supposed to pick up (an unopened bottle of olive oil for perineal massage, a butterfly net for cleaning out the tub in the event of a water birth, etc), which we may end up doing on Halloween, for lack of a better day, LOL!

But yeah we are pretty much totally set. :-)

And now that we are totally set, I'm starting to get a bit antsy. Like how will I ever pass the next 2.5 weeks waiting for him to arrive?? (Probably by blogging a lot, LOL.)

0 is the number of days until I can go into labor and still have my home-birth (36 weeks)
0 is the number of days until I am full term (37 weeks)
18 is the number of days until my meaningless due date (40 weeks)
32 is the absolute maximum number of days that I could be pregnant (42 weeks)

Wow 18 days until my due date, I can't believe it!!!

Plus this whole time I've been saying 40 weeks +/- 2 weeks but that means my birth window will be here in just 4 days! Wow!