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.
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