40 Weeks: Baby Girl's Nursery Reveal!!!

I’m at 40 weeks and 6 days today. Tomorrow, I hit 41 weeks of pregnancy. To be honest, I feel ready to give birth – more so than I’ve felt for the past 10+ months of being pregnant. I’m not afraid of the process like I was a few months ago. Lately, I’ve found myself praying, “Lord, please send me contractions. I can take it. Bring on the intensity!” As if I’m gearing up for an epic P90X workout, where trainer Tony’s mantra rings in my ears: “Work through the pain, not to the pain!” 

I really want to meet this sweet, active baby girl who has been growing inside my belly. I want to see what she looks like, and trace the outline of her face with my fingers. Brown eyes or green eyes? Light skin or dark skin? What color of hair will she have? Somehow, I think that she will encompass the most beautiful combination of all these features.

C’mon, Baby! We’re ready for you now, at least as ready as I think Ken and I can possibly be at this point in our lives.

At my Doctor’s appointment two days ago, I found out that I’m about 3 cm dilated, and the lining of my cervix is much thinner than last week. Since I have more amniotic fluid than the average woman, every time baby girl moves down into my pelvis, the fluid bounces her back up. This is nothing to worry about, according to my physician, it just means that she probably won’t drop completely until my water breaks – and at that point, I will definitely know that my water broke because it will be a ton of water. (This actually gets me excited, because I’m going to lose quite a bit of weight on the day I give birth – it’s the small things, right?)

Baby girl is doing great and has obviously enjoyed her time in utero. My focus these past few days has been to give her as many nutrient-rich vegetables and fruits and proteins as possible. Occasionally, this has been difficult as I’m experiencing uncomfortable bouts of nausea this week. My physician is hopeful that I’ll go into labor any day now and if not, by the end of next week, we’ll most likely do some induction techniques (after exhausting all the more natural forms first) and I’ll get to meet our sweet little lady! I look forward to sharing that news with you soon.

Until then, I wanted to share photos of our nursery renovation: before and after pics, of course. I’m suddenly a tad bit embarrassed by how messy the room was before we starting organizing, cleaning, and changing things. Please excuse my initial mess. It’s hard as a woman to let people see this part of my life – the messier, unkempt parts –but I recognize that it’s worth it to be vulnerable. Author and Ted Talk Speaker Brene Brown would be proud of me right now.

Also, before I show you these pictures, I’d like to thank my incredibly patient, humble, and talented husband for working day and night (outside of his full-time job) to put in wood flooring, build shelving, hang photos and decorations, compile baby equipment, and still give me occasional back rubs and pep talks. Ken, you are amazing. Thank you for creating this beautiful nursery + office area. Also, thank you to Ken's parents and friends who helped us in this process!

Hope you enjoy these photos - click on each to enlarge. :)

BEFORE Pictures: 

Clutter everywhere - basically my office become a storage room after Christmas and it's easy to just keep adding things to storage...Penny though the clutter was awesome. She liked exploring in there.

First Project: Installing Wallpaper

And Building Furniture...

Second Project: Removing Carpet & Installing Wood Flooring 

Finished Flooring:

Then Setting Up Baby Equipment:

AFTER PICTURES: It's All Done!

I enjoyed using my design skills to craft a giant paper flower in Ruby's nursery colors and also utilized old wallpaper from Ken's grandma Alice's house for Ruby's wall lettering. I think this wallpaper could be more than 30 years old. It didn't stick to anything, but thankfully I had a hot-glue gun. Now, I just need to wait a week for all my burns to heal after using the hot glue gun for this type of project...

A peek into how I organized the drawers for baby girl's dresser/changing table combo:

I really love how everything turned out and I hope you enjoyed seeing this renovation! Now, to find more things to occupy my time while I wait patiently for Ruby's arrival. 

Back to praying...C'mon Baby!