A Light at the End of the Tunnel

Yesterday and today have been strange. Something's different.

Yesterday, we had a nice long visit with Casey and her baby, Asher. During the visit, I realized that I hadn't noticed the baby move all morning. I grew concerned, drank some orange juice, and did an official "kick count" for the next two hours. The baby just barely reached the "10 movements within 2 hours" marker, but we figured that all was within normal limits, just a little unusual for Bambin@. 

Later in the evening, there were no worries about Bambin@'s movements. The baby was moving -- and moving strangely. They were low, painful twisting and wrenching movements that, at one point, almost made me feel as though I was going numb in my lower abdomen. I kept saying to my belly, "What are you doing in there? Aren't you engaged enough?" After all, at my last appointment, the midwife had made it seem as though the baby's head was locked and loaded, ready for labor. 

Over the past few days, I'd been trying out the contraction timer. But since my contractions would often come on gradually and taper off slowly, it was hard to use it meaningfully. But I'd noticed an increase in the intensity of the contractions over the past couple days, so when one hit at 7:30, I noted the time just by looking at the clock. When the next one hit, I noticed the time was 8pm, the next at around 8:30, the next at 9:00, etc. It was the first time that my contractions had ever come in a distinctly timeable way. It wasn't that I was staring at the clock and thinking, "Is this a contraction?" when the designated time approached, either. I noticed the pattern just with me glancing at the clock when I noticed a contraction. It was pretty cool to have an actual pattern. 

Eventually, I started to succumb to the clock-watching, though and so I decided that it was time to get some rest. The contractions were still 5-10 minutes in duration, and painful. So they were taking a lot out of me, despite the long spacing. I called the midwives and double-checked to make sure it would be safe to take a sleep aid even if I was in early labor. She gave me the green light to do so and encouraged me to rest up. Even with the sleep aid, I woke up with the contractions several times during the night. The pain was pretty intense at times, but I was still able to get back to sleep after it was over. Interestingly, many of the times that I woke up with a contraction were close to the top or bottom of the hour, making me think that the 30-minute spacing was maintained throughout the night. 

In the morning, I grew weary of watching the clock and, after calling my doula, was advised that it would be better to ignore the clock at this point anyway. It had been satisfying to notice a regular pattern, but I was ready for some distraction. I went to the Free Ink Day at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. I'd mentally put this on my calendar a few months ago, when I realized that it would be a good idea to have a fun consolation prize if my due date rolled around and I still had no baby. I made two prints, one of which I think I might hang in the baby's room. While printmaking, my contractions slowed to only a couple over the course of two hours. 

When I got home, I had a few more and was exhausted. I took a long nap and was awakened by an extremely painful contraction. After it finally passed, I texted with my doula for a bit, cried for a bit about how frustrating it is to have such long, painful contractions but with such distant and discouraging spacing, and then headed to the bathroom. 

I'd been expecting the bloody show for the last few weeks, with no result. I had pretty much given up on the idea that I would have this particular early labor sign, since there weren't even tiny specs of color on the toilet tissue. So seeing "the show" on the toilet tissue this evening was pretty surprising. What was kind of awesome about it was that it got grosser and more bloody with each subsequent wipe. I'll end my description there, but if you're curious, feel free to ask. 

After seeing the bloody show, my mood changed entirely. I feel less discouraged and more optimistic. My body is showing some normal signs of early labor. Even if I'd prefer to have more "normal" contractions, I am reassured by the fact that there is a tangible, visible sign of impending labor that has been observed, rather than just my weirdo contractions alone. 

Ironically, since the bloody show, my contractions have been getting a little more "normal." They've increased in intensity, but they've reduced in length to about 2-5 minutes, rather than 5-10 minutes long. And they've been coming on with a more intense start and a more noticeable finish, which makes the after-contraction period much more manageable. Before, it had felt like 10 minutes of contraction, followed by another several minutes of soreness and exhaustion. Even though these ones hurt more, they are over faster and there's an actual rest at the end of them. The rest is nice and long, too, since they're still pretty far apart -- about every 45 minutes for the past few hours. (Although the last one was just fourteen and a half minutes after the previous one, so we'll see...)

I'm pretty excited. I know that it could still be awhile and, at this point, I'm pretty okay with that. I'm not sure that this kid would like having to share a birthday with St. Patrick's Day, so we can take this slowly and wait awhile. Maybe this is why Bambin@ waited until just after Pi Day to give me any signs of impending labor -- just to make sure that I wouldn't be stressed about trying to get him/her out in a hurry. 

EDIT: Just after posting this, I got another contraction -- fourteen and a half minutes after the previous one. Pretty cool how they get into a rhythm, no? 

Pi Day

It's past midnight. March 14 has come and gone and I still have no baby. I know that this probably seems terribly silly, but ever since I found out my due date -- heck, ever since I was charting and saw that, if I got pregnant in that particular month, our baby's due date would be close to Pi Day -- I have been yearning for a Pi Day baby.

It would have been easier for me if the baby had come two weeks ago. But the days passed and I still had no baby. With each passing day that I didn't go into labor, I decided that it was a good sign that the baby would come on Pi Day, making it all worthwhile. When people asked whether I was going to have my membranes stripped or whether our midwives would take other actions to speed up labor in order to make it happen, my reply was a definite, "Of course not! We want the baby to come when it's ready . . ." But deep down inside, I wanted it to come on my timeline. My nerdy timeline. And somehow, I started to believe that the baby's timeline and my timeline would line up. After all, it's my baby, right? Shouldn't a Pi Day birthday be as important to the baby as it is to me?

This morning, one of the teachers at school called me and held up the phone while the students sang "Happy Pi Day" to me, which was incredibly sweet. Earlier in the week, I'd made and delivered a Pi Day card for my students (which I'd decorated with a spiral of 684 digits of Pi in alternating colors . . . very cathartic) and I was excited that they'd thought to wish me a Happy Pi Day in return.  I told the teacher that I thought that the baby was planning on spending Pi Day inside the uterus, but even as I said it, I was hoping that the next 15 hours would bring me a baby.

At Ben's suggestion, I decided to distract myself by measuring the circumference of my belly -- which I hadn't done all throughout the pregnancy. 42 inches. I sent the figure to the staff members at school, encouraging them to challenge students to find the radius and diameter of the belly in celebration of the day. That made me feel good and nerdy. Ben reassured me that the baby's interest in staying inside the womb on Pi Day was an indication of it's appreciation of spheres, which made me feel better too.

But nevertheless, I'm embarrassed to say that this day has had me spontaneously bursting into tears on several occasions. It's silly, I know, but somehow I feel like every day that the baby doesn't come is a personal rejection of me as it's mother. Like Bambin@ doesn't trust that I'll be a good parent and so is therefore trying to postpone the inevitable disappointment. As I write that out, it sounds completely ridiculous, but it's kind of surprising just how real it feels.

It's kind of like the feeling you'd have if you thought someone might be planning a surprise party for you and then you realized that they weren't. You'd feel a little foolish for having gotten your hopes up in the first place, and a little rejected because you'd realize that they weren't thinking about you in the way that you'd thought they were. With this, it's like every day I am expecting a surprise party -- which is already pure torture when it's been going on for two weeks, but is particularly bad when the realization sets in that it wasn't even as though the baby was holding out for a special occasion and that's the reason why it hadn't happened sooner. Sound a little crazy? If so, that's because it is.

A week ago, I started to make a list of all the upcoming dates on which this baby could be born, and tried to come up with reasons why each and every one of them would be great. Unfortunately, I brainstormed chronologically, so all of the reasons that I've found are for days that are now already passed. I should perhaps work backwards. Starting with 3/31/13 (which is, admittedly, a pretty cool date) and working backwards to the present day. That way, rather than looking forward to a date that is still 2 days earlier than the 40 week mark, I can hold out hope for a date that is at 42w1d, and therefore less likely to disappoint me by coming and going with no baby in sight.

But with my luck, this baby will make an April Fool out of me.

Nine Months

Today was a rough day for me. Today I am nine months pregnant exactly and I feel like my emotions are kind of all over the place. I feel anxious and scared about the impending birth, impatient and frustrated that I have no control over it, stressed about things that I need or want to do before the baby arrives, and excited and happy that I'll get to meet my baby soon. All at the same time.

Part of the drama is that our doula is going out of town soon, and she'll be out of town for four days this week (until the day before the due date). We've known this all along and we've met the back-up doula and we feel comfortable with her, but there's still a sense of nervousness. I think all along I had kind of thought that the baby would come before she left town, and so it would have been a moot point. But this morning, as I was having some contractions that made me think, "Is this the start of something?" I realized that, if it were, I would need to give birth in the next day and a half if I wanted our doula to be there. All of a sudden, I stopped wanting the baby to come early and started hoping it would wait until she was back in town. This was immediately replaced by a fear that Bambin@ will come late and I'd only have a few weeks with him/her before having to go back to work. So, as you can see, I don't know what to hope for . . . not that it matters, I suppose. Statistically speaking, at this point I have a 1 out of 3 chance that Bambin@ will arrive before the due date, but less than a 4% chance that Bambin@ will arrive before the doula leaves town. So the most likely occurrence is that the birth will happen after she's back in town (yay!) but that will be when I'm overdue and anxious about the fact that Bambin@ is wasting away the time that we have left of my maternity leave by just hanging out in my uterus (nay!).

The contractions, by the way, turned out to be nothing. And even though the cashier at Target this evening said that she thought I was going to have the baby "tonight or tomorrow," I'm not holding my breath.

Let's just see who blinks first . . .

I've decided that it is best if I begin to accept the possibility that I will be pregnant forever.

It's not that I'm terribly shocked that I haven't gone into labor yet. I'm only 38 weeks and 3 days pregnant. Despite the fact that my mom's longest pregnancy was a week shorter than what I am now (thanks Mom, for giving me totally unrealistic expectations of myself . . .), and despite the fact that I've been contracting painfully for weeks now, I am aware of the statistical unlikelihood of having given birth by 38 weeks and 3 days. In fact, it's because of the fact that it's entirely possible that this pregnancy will last another four weeks that I think it would be best if I prepared myself for the less-likely-but-there's-a-first-time-for-everything chance that I will be pregnant for the rest of my life.

I feel very strongly that this baby is ready to come out. I know that babies come on their own timeline and that it's best not to "rush baby" ahead of that timeline, but I still have a strong feeling that Bambin@ is ready for the outside world. But for some reason, our little procrastinator is stalling. And if I accept the fact that our baby can stall, then, well, I must accept the possibility that it could stall indefinitely.

So here we go. Here would be some of the possible advantages to this baby staying in there forever:
1. No diapers to change or milk to pump. Bambin@'s needs are being addressed efficiently from inside the womb.
2. Never having to baby-proof the house or worry about finding someone to watch the baby while we're out. Bambin@ can come with us to restaurants, movies, etc and we'd never have to worry about him/her throwing a fit.
3. I can rock and sing to Bambin@ and never have to worry about whether my soothing techniques are "working" or not.
4. I can keep all of Bambin@'s books and toys for myself.
5. I look super cute in maternity clothes.

Hear that, kiddo? I know you're stubborn, but I'm stubborn too. If you're in this for the long haul, I can wait it out as well. You just watch.

I am, of course, aware of the fact that it isn't actually healthy for either myself or Bambin@ to continue this pregnancy indefinitely. But for the purposes of this showdown, I'm assuming a placenta of infinite freshness, a womb of plentiful space and amniotic fluid, etc. 

Waiting for Baby

I go back and forth. Some days, I'm excited by the fact that this baby will surprise me with it's arrival -- that I have no idea where I'll be or what I'll be doing when I go into labor, that I don't know how it will start (sudden water breaking? gradual increasing regularity of contractions?), that I don't know what our baby's birthday will be, etc.

If I were guaranteed that it would happen in the next 12 days, I'd probably be fine with the uncertainty, and even continue to be excited by it. But it's so hard to deal with it when it could be tomorrow, it could be a week and a half from now, it could be three and a half weeks from now . . . Twelve days is kind of my maximum window of excitement -- being told that something could happen anytime in the next 26 days is a little too much.

So I'm trying to distract myself, but it's hard when I'm not at work anymore and everything that happens in my body feels like it could be labor. Here's the rundown of what I'm experiencing:

1. Contractions. Irregular, painful, and generally pretty long. This is not really anything new, though, which is frustrating. Nothing really seems to impact them one way or another -- not how hydrated I am, whether or not I'm in a hot shower, whether I'm resting or upright, etc. I don't feel like I have a very good handle on them, though -- it's hard to tell when one begins and ends, and since I haven't been timing them or anything, I couldn't really tell you how many I have a day. Part of me thinks I should be paying closer attention and collecting more detailed data, but another part of me worries that it will only make me paranoid.

2. More hiccups. I've noticed that the baby gets the hiccups about once a day now, whereas before they would be more rare. According to a little Googling, if anything, hiccups mean that labor is not imminent, since the baby stops its practice breathing 24-48 hours before labor.

3. Cervical twinges. I'm not sure if this is an accurate description because it's hard for me to tell what I'm feeling in my cervix vs. vagina vs. pelvis in general, etc . . . but I will often have a weird, painful feeling in what I can only assume is my cervix. Maybe it's a baby kicking or maybe it's a baby burrowing its head down, or maybe I'm feeling my cervix dilate? I also kind of feel like I sometimes feel my cervix pulsating or something. Not sure how to describe it. It's like it's doing some quick involuntary contractions on it's own that are separate from my uterus. Almost like involuntary kegels? But not really, because they feel more internal. They kind of have the same rhythm as the practice breathing, so maybe it's just that I'm feeling the baby practice breathing, but because his/her head is right on my cervix, it feels like the cervix is pulsing.

4. Mucus. Just a little, and nothing unusual. If it were 3 months ago, I wouldn't think anything of it, but of course now I'm thinking, "Hmm...mucus plug?"

5. Lightening. It's still hard for me to tell just by looking in the mirror, but I'm pretty sure that the baby is dropping.  Others have remarked that my belly looks lower, and I feel a little more comfortable in terms of my belly height. The shirt that I wore yesterday seemed to fit more loosely, but when I looked in the mirror, it actually looked tighter at the lower part of my belly. Before it had been snug up top and loose on bottom.

That's about it, though. I'm not nesting, there's no bloody show, and I'm generally not feeling an eerie sense of "today's the day" or anything. Everyone says that "when you're in labor, you'll know." So I'm trying to just roll with that and figure that if I'm not getting a strong, "This is labor" vibe, then I'm not in labor. No matter how many twinges I get or how many contractions send me to my knees, if I'm not convinced it's labor, then it probably isn't.