Thursday's the day.

Directions are here.

The short version: after a couple of procedures (at the hospital) to help Gretchen along, we will be staying overnight at the hospital on Wednesday, and she will be induced beginning Thursday morning.

The long version: our regular doctor was not at the clinic today for our appointment -- she got called out for an emergency C-section followed by another delivery, so we were seen by a nurse practitioner. They were concerned about her high blood pressure and the fact that we're three days late, so they sent us to the hospital for some monitoring and a cervical gel treatment, to aid dilation. Dr. Washbusch caught up with us at the hospital and laid out the plan: we're going in Wednesday morning for another cervical gel treatment, and will return to the hospital in the evening for an overnight cervical treatment. Thursday morning we'll start with pitosin to actually induce labor. This is all assuming Gretchen's water doesn't break or she doesn't start getting extreme contractions between now and then.

See you all at the hospital, hopefully Thursday afternoon or evening.

As most everyone knows, we've got a name -- first and middle -- picked out (plus a backup boy's name, just in case!) and have been keeping it a secret, as hard as that has been. I've nearly let it slip more than once.

If you want to guess, leave your guess as a comment on this post. (You don't need a Blogger account to leave a comment; just click 'Anonymous' or whatever.) The correct guesser gets to... uh... babysit first?

I'll think of a prize later. It probably won't matter, anyway -- I don't think anyone will guess correctly.

Thanks to Grandma & Grandma Painting™, we got the nursery painted over the weekend, and now all of the furniture is pretty much set. It looks pretty nice: