Checking Things Off The List...

I know I promised you all that I was going to blog about my sweet Daddy tonight, but I am waiting on my slacker sister to send me a certain picture in order for my post to be complete.  :-)  Instead, I have a very important announcement: we are FLYING through our to-do list, folks.

For a planner like me, this bed rest situation has seriously cramped my style.  I had (and still have) a list of things a mile long that I want(ed) to get accomplished before Baby Geronimina arrives.  I literally sit cooped up on this couch daily and think of more things that need to be added to it, and it makes me frantic some days.  I thought I had 6 weeks to continue to mark things off.  Wrong-o, especially since I can't do anything.  In the past week, though, we've made excellent progress.  Here's how:

• We finished painting the nursery.
• The furniture is all here and assembled.  We have family in town this weekend for our first shower, so we are leaving the bed in there for now, but after the shower, we will assemble the nursery.  Yay!  Still TONS to do in here, but the good news is, she'll never know or care that it probably won't may not be done when she arrives.
• I ordered thank you notes and hostess gifts for my showers.
• We agreed on (agreeing on something related to the nursery was a big enough deal that I had to include it) and hung a chandelier in the nursery (score one for Sarah).
• All classes - prenatal and breast feeding - have been completed.
• We watched the last documentary I had on my list.
• I am almost through the books I ordered to read.

I know some of that seems silly, but accomplishing things really makes me feel so much better.  Today, we marked off one of the biggest items of all: we decided on a pediatrician!

The item at the TOP of my list at the beginning of this week was to set up pediatrician interviews.  Before Christmas, I compiled a huge spreadsheet (nerdy, I know) of all of the pediatricians that had been recommended (around 10) to us by friends and acquaintances.  I gathered information from their websites and cross referenced the practices with the list of recommended pediatricians that was given to us by my OB at our first appointment, and further narrowed the list down to 6.  From there, Dan and I picked our top 3, and at the beginning of the week, I called them all to see if we could schedule interviews.  All 3 offer a prenatal class, the first of which was today (our next one was supposed to be in 2 weeks, and the final visit I was supposed to call back about next week).  We had tonight's prenatal session at Oberlin Road Pediatrics (thanks to the suggestion of Mary-Peyton), and both agreed upon leaving that we don't need to conduct any more interviews, because we LOVED them!

A lot of factors went into this decision.  This practice is close to our house, and very close to the area of town where we hope to eventually live.  There are 9 doctors in the practice, but a lot of them work flex schedules (i.e. some work Mon - Wed, some work Thurs - Sat, some work mornings, some work evenings, etc.).  I pictured the practice we chose to be smaller, but the size of this one is perfect and allows them to be flexible in other areas (read: good hours).  They  have excellent hours as well as weekend hours.  They have a nurse hotline which is staffed by their own nurses from 8am - 8pm, but there is a calling service for after hours as well, so if I have a motherly freakout need in the middle of the night, I can still call.  They have a lactation specialist as well as 5 female doctors who breast fed and will set up appointments to help new Moms out, and they are big advocates for breastfeeding.  For sick and same-day visits, there is a very good chance that we'll get to see our child's doctor.  They also monitor the mother's progress in that they have you fill out a post-partum depression questionnaire each visit.  There are plenty of other things I could rave about, but we really just loved everything about this practice.  The doctor of tonight's session was incredible - very open, honest and up-front, and we really liked that as well.

So, that is one BIG thing that I'm happy to have taken care of.  Now, if we could just get a car seat, I'd really feel a lot more awesome about where things stand.  :-)

Happy Thursday - I have an appointment with my doctor in the morning, so fingers crossed that everything goes well.  Other than that, I'm just excited for the weekend to hurry up and get here - my first shower on Sunday is going to be a blast!

Sarah