"Pregatory"

Today I met the final mid-wife at the practice, meaning I've now met all of the staff who might show up on labor day. And this mid-wife, Sue, informed me that I am 1cm dilated. While it's nice to hear that something is happening, there are many tales of people walking around 1-2cm dilated for weeks, so I'm not allowing myself to get anxious or excited.
I was not, however, surprised to hear of the change. Yesterday I had about 1/2 hour of Braxton-Hicks contractions (essentially translating to "practice cramps") that I was able to relieve by lying down and hydrating (which is one of the ways one knows they're not the real thing -- they go away). They felt a little different from the belly-tightening I've felt before but were not painful, and I thought to myself "I bet when I go to the OB I will have dilated a little bit." Pure supposition on my part, and yet, lo and behold!
By Sue's estimation, since I'm not really effacing and only dilated a tiny bit, I will probably make my Wednesday appointment next week without having gone into labor, at which point we will start to talk about how long we'll wait past my due date, inducing labor, etc. Still, I think I'm finally going to pack that hospital bag and get the car-seat set up. We have a waterproof liner on my side of the mattress and we wrapped up the rest of our registry shopping on Sunday, so we're just about ready in terms of practical preparations.
Mental preparations, however, are still in progress. Steve and I chatted a bit and both agreed that however we feel about having a baby in our lives, we are good and ready for it to come just so we can start adapting to it already. This waiting around stuff is pregatory (= pregnancy + purgatory, in case that's not obvious). Once baby comes, we can adapt to it with hopefully just enough time to adapt to all of the girls returning to school in early September and my job starting, and then...finally...routine. After a summer-long period of transition after transition, it's hard to imagine a routine again!
But I digress. One centimeter, people. With the actual speed of the events to follow still unknown, at least we can say, "it has begun."