Prelabor

This is the first of two or three posts that will attempt to capture some of the events that led up to Katie Wilkes' arrival this past Wednesday. It is so hard (so fast) to remember anything, but I don't want to forget, because it was different from Lee's arrival in almost every way.

The week kicked off last Friday with four days of prelabor. Minor contractions on Friday afternoon increased in frequency during dinner, and had Bryan and me believing we may meet our little girl on Saturday sometime.

While we were putting Lee to bed, I snapped a shot of him on his last night of being an only child (or so I thought).

Bryan and I headed straight to our room and got our bags packed, a task we had been piddling around with for several days, only now we took it seriously. We talked about plans for possible scenarios, what the birth experience might be like this time around, and how our family was about to change. We also wondered if we would get much sleep before labor started.

We did. Saturday morning came uneventfully, though the contractions continued through the morning. To pass the time, we walked over to the Chomp N Stomp in Cabbagetown and enjoyed a chili lunch.

(I pulled these photos from ajc.com.)

We each had a yummy popsicle from King of Pops while Lee played on the playground, visited with friends we ran into along the way, then headed home to hang out the rest of the afternoon. We got a few little house projects done, but already, we were starting to take this thing less seriously. We knew she was on the way, but now it felt like getting back to normal life was the way to go.

We went to church Sunday, and I woke up Monday for my weekly doctor's appointment, where I was told they couldn't even check me because the uterus was still so high. I was at least hoping to hear there had been some little progress, so this was disappointing, but I got over it and Monday night, we went by Whole Foods for me to get the remaining ingredients I needed for dinners the rest of the week.

Tuesday was KW's due date, so I felt it was time to bring the cradle into our room. Lee helped me move it, with a cute little pit stop in the den where he "worked on it" with his tools.

He has been so cute as we have gotten ready to welcome this little girl into our house and family. After we got the cradle placed, he brought all of his bedtime friends and put them inside, so she would have some friends of her own when she went to sleep!

And, this really was his last day of being an only child, though we did not know yet. When we went to bed Tuesday night, contractions were about the same, and we had no reason to think they were going to get stronger any time soon...