I'm 38.5 weeks. Are we at the point yet where if I don't blog for a few days, then everyone assumes I've gone into labor? I think so.
Really, it's not as bad as it could be, being massively, almost-due pregnant. I'm trying to remind myself that to a point - 41 weeks or so, which is technically a week overdue - the longer he stays in, the better. Miriam was born 11 days early after an lengthy induction since my water leaked but I never went into labor. She had horrible jaundice and had to be re-admitted when she was just a few days old. She was very lethargic and had trouble nursing for the first little while. It was almost as if she, oh I don't know, wasn't ready to be born.
Contrast that with Magdalena, born on her due date, who was my little chub baby at 8lbs 7oz. She came into the world READY. Ready to nurse, ready to grow, ready to be here. It was hard to wait all 40 weeks, but it was so much easier in the end to have a baby who came when she was ready.
So even though I'm technically at the "any day now" stage, I'm trying to keep myself content with being pregnant for a little longer. Only about 2.5 weeks longer, in fact - much like in the US, standard practice here is to look into induction methods after 41 weeks. As part of my bid to increase my patience and acceptance of a timeline that is not fully my own, I am trying to smile while putting up with:
- increasingly bad sleep. Waking up three times to go pee is normal. Waking up to a series of contractions (whether real or false) is normal. Waking up to heave myself and my pillows into a different position on the bed is normal.
- heartburn. Pretty much, I get heartburn from drinking water now.
- joint pain. My hips hurt so bad when I first get up from sitting or lying down and I have to hobble around like an old woman for a few minutes.
- weight gain/skin stretching. The human body is amazing, but seriously, how much bigger can my belly get and how long until my skin gives up stretching over it?
- clothes that don't fit me. I am never comfortable in what I'm wearing anymore. Never. If I were to find something comfortable, it would probably be so heinous-looking that those around me would avert their eyes in horror.
- uncertainty regarding my short-term thesis timeline. I will defend this semester for sure, but should I jump in to heavy-duty analysis right now? Or am I going to have this baby tomorrow so any serious thinking I do today will be wasted?
- well-meaning inquiries from friends and neighbors who haven't seen me for a while. Sometimes a "how are you doing?" query can come across like thinly veiled "woah, I thought you would have had that baby already!". It's a Catch-22 because part of me wants to say, "yep, I'm due any day now!" But the other part of me realizes that in 2 weeks, I might see that person again, and I might still have not had this baby. Sigh.
One thing I am pretty sure I am not going to have to deal with anymore as a pregnant woman is church, aka my least favorite place to be (in a social sense) after about 30 weeks. I've reached the tipping point where I would be happier to return to church in a few weeks with a tiny infant wrapped to the outside of my body than to continue to attend in my current huge state. Look, church is three hours long, and I have trouble sitting still for 10 minutes, even, but anyway I work in the Primary class with almost 40 children who sometimes act like rabid squirrels so I'm on my feet a lot, expending energy I don't have, and it's just too much. Plus, the comments. Nobody wants to see me cry, but that's what's going to happen if I show up at church pregnant, still. I might go on Friday. I might not. Whatever I decide, I'll return all the earlier after the baby is born.
Which, by the way (are you listening, Universe??), can be any time. I'm just sayin'.