Intense Baby Prep Checklist and a personal question

• Car seat bases installed and inspected.....DONE. The EMTs were very impressed by Jeromy's installation skills, but they still uninstalled and re-installed them again anyway, just to make sure we knew how to do it.  They also had us practice strapping a creepy baby doll into the seat.  
• Newborn/3-month sized clothes washed and hung in the nursery closet...DONE.  
•  Baby gear set up...DONE.  Entirely by Jeromy and our dads, I should add, although I did hand Jeromy pieces of the swing while beached on the couch.
•  Nursery decorated.....DONE.  
• Hospital bags packed....done as much as possible, since we still need to wear and use some of the stuff you are supposed to put in there.
• Infant CPR class.....DONE, just this past week.  We couldn't get into one until May 10th, which made me hyperventilate a little bit, but we made it.  We each got our own sanitized plastic baby face to snap in and out of  the shared practice dolls.  Which wasn't creepy AT ALL.  Also, Jeromy and I BOTH (separately) asked a lady in the class when she was due...who had given birth to her twins 5 weeks earlier....oops.
• Stock freezer with easy meals....DONE.  Jeromy hit the kitchen a few weekends and made about 17 servings of tortilla soup and bolognese sauce.
• Pre-registration with the hospital and anesthesiologist (ALMOST spelled that right on my first try).....DONE.  Got the shock of my life when I talked to the lady at the anesthesiologist's office; apparently once they give you ANYTHING through the IV--Pitocin, epidural, etc--the anesthesiologist goes on "standby" for you until you deliver....for $90 every FIFTEEN MINUTES.  That's before insurance, but.....wow.
• Mom back in Texas and within a two-hour drive at all times....DONE.  It's a good thing, too, because I think if the baby had come early, I would have refused to leave the hospital until my mom was around to be there when we brought him home.  Plus, the plan is for my parents to drive in and take care of the Pampered Puppy Princess while we are at the hospital.  

So are we missing anything???  Anything else we need to know about ahead of time?  Because I swear, if I get to the other side of this whole thing and start talking about the birth experience, and all of a sudden everyone is like, "ah, yes, I remember when the giant winged dragon flew through the window and bit me on the arm.  No one warns you about that part, do they?"  I will feel very betrayed.


Finally......a questions for previous birth-givers that might fall under the TMI category, but I would like to know....did you have your membranes stripped to get labor going?  Effectiveness?  Pain level?  Pros and cons?