Today’s is the bean’s “due” date! Since one study put the average first time birth as happening at 41 weeks and 1 day (still 8 days away), we’ll see when she actually comes, but we are officially, officially full-term here! And also, happy first day of summer-slash-summer solstice!

I had an OB appointment yesterday and the good news was that I was 100% effaced! Less good news (but not bad, necessarily) was that I was only .5 cm dilated. To actually give birth to a baby, you need to be 100% effaced and 10 cm dilated, so basically the closer you are to that, the better, kind of. But progress can happen REALLY fast, or you can sit at 3-4 cm dilated for weeks, so it doesn’t mean THAT much. I was just happy that anything was happening, so the effacement is great news!

I am going back for another OB appointment on Thursday because my blood pressure was a little high (I blame the chips and pickle I unwisely had for lunch just before), and they want to make sure I’m not developing any serious complications, like preeclampsia. I don’t have any of the other signs, though, so I’m not too worried. I’m actually glad I can go back again Thursday because I just feel better being a little more closely monitored at this stage in the game.

We also scheduled an induction date, should Baby decide to take her sweet time about this, like her mom (10 days late) and her dad (30+ days late) did. So if she has not made her appearance yet, Baby will be induced on July 1 (but please send good vibes that she comes of her own accord before then! Induced labor is generally not as “pleasant” as naturally occurring labor, so I’d very much like to avoid that). The only silver lining in the induction would be that my OB, whom I super-puffy-heart-love, is on duty that night, so it’s possible or likely that he would be the one to deliver her if I did end up getting an induction. (Kaiser works on a rotation system so, while you don’t know who will deliver your baby, you also don’t have to worry about over-tired doctors or docs who might make decisions about inductions/c-sections based on wanting to have a really long labor over with).

My parents safely arrived, so now we are just hanging out until the baby comes. It’s nice to have my mom here to help motivate me to finish some of my projects, since she is such a fantastic sewer! Hopefully we can finish getting the baby’s room cleaned out too, so that we can take pictures and show off everyone’s hard work!