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.
I never understood those women who are so serene at the end of pregnancy and all like "Let the baby come when he/she is ready! I'm not in a hurry!" I pretty much lost my mind at the end there. So I understand how you feel. My money is on next Friday, so that means your doula will be back in town and you'll have time to do all those things you need/want to do before Bambin@ gets here!
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