Holy Cow, It's the Third Trimester

One part of the nursery from Children Inspire Design

I for one, cannot believe I'm entering my third trimester. When you start reading baby books, 40 weeks, three trimesters and hundreds of days seem like an eternity. It seems like just yesterday, I was hiding positive pregnancy tests in with the mail and trying to get my husband to sort it already. Seriously. The man walked around the house for what seemed like 45 minutes before he decided to look through the mail. At that point, I had known for three hours. I finally had to say, "Did you get any good mail?"

And even then, it took FOREVER for him to get to the part of the pile that involved a plastic bag with pregnancy tests inside.

And now we're nearing the end of this journey. I've started talking to my wonderful sister-in-law about baby showers. We're amassing nursery furniture and making concrete plans for when we're painting the nursery. Prepared childbirth classes and hospital tours are coming up (if you are pregnant and haven't signed up yet, it's super easy: Just go here.) This weekend, we'll take a babymoon. I've begun seeing my doctor every two weeks, as opposed to once a month. We pre-registered at the hospital, and will visit with a pediatrician soon.

And yet, somehow, I feel woefully unprepared - partly because of a major kink thrown into our baby-preparedness plans: a complete and totally necessary remodeling of our bathroom.

In the middle of everything (and at the beginning of a major nesting urge), we discovered that the previous owners of our adorable little 3-bedroom, 1950's bungalow installed both the toilet and the bathtub in our only bathroom incorrectly. Both have been steadily leaking for a while now, necessitating a complete gutting of the room.

So when I should be working on getting the nursery set up, I'm picking out tile and making conversation with our contractor. And in two weeks, we'll be nomadic for a week while our only bathroom is rendered unusable. It's a simple equation ( At least 2 quarts of water a day + baby on bladder + need for hygiene = need a bathroom pretty much all the time) that will have us sleeping at the homes of relatives and friends (thank goodness we have them, though!).

I'm trying to be upbeat about this - after all, we do get a pristine bathroom out of it. But the timing? Inconvenient. And I will admit I had one little meltdown last week when I started talking about all the things we have to do before the baby comes. Thankfully, getting out the calendar and marking dates for things helped quite a bit, as did my husband's suggestion that we just go away for a weekend to decompress before this giant flurry of activity happens.

So, fellow pregnant moms, where are you on the planning and nesting stage? And for been-there-done-that moms, when did you start feeling anxious about the time remaining before the baby arrived?

Bethany Erickson is 27 weeks pregnant and the wife of Texas Health Resources web editor Tom Erickson.