I always tell friends "don't rush the end of the pregnancy!" "Babies are all born eventually!" "A due date is a guess, not an eviction notice!" Yet by this time I was soooo huge and soooo uncomfortable. I just wanted the baby OUT and felt like such a hypocrite about it. I was barely full term. To be fair, at this point I had been measuring 40+ weeks pregnant for over 4 weeks and having prodromal labor on and off for over a week where I'd start thinking "this is it!" only nothing would progress.
So I threw myself into finishing my to-do list and getting the house CLEAN.
I cleaned the guest room which still had some yard sale mess and laundry piled all over the bed, just in case the midwife or doula were here long enough to need a nap (har har). I organized the birth supplies, postpartum supplies, breastfeeding supplies, and finished washing and organizing the baby diapers and blankets.
I dusted light fixtures, got Jerad to finish hanging the curtains, changed the sheets on all 6 beds (Marshall has 2 in his room), put plastic on ours in the event that my water broke in bed, and vacuumed and mopped the entire house before bed each night and wiped down the bathrooms just in case I woke up in labor I wanted to have a clean and peaceful space.
We finally blew up the birth pool and hid it from the kids in the baby room:
And I continued to wake up pregnant and not in labor every morning:) On Tuesday I packed up the kids and took them to gymnastics (which is how I spent the early part of my labor with Miller).
Chasing two toddlers around is hard work so I didn't really get any pictures, but they had SO MUCH FUN. Miller had never been before and just ran right out there like one of the big kids. After the class was over someone came up to me and said I was the happiest looking pregnant person and she couldn't believe how much energy I had because she had a hard time keeping up with her one child and she wasn't even pregnant. I told her I just fake it. Which was totally true.
The next day (Wednesday) I had a midwife apt and asked for a cervical check. I'd never had one before because they're kind of pointless. Some people walk around at 5 cm for weeks before giving birth, and some people go from 1-10 in a matter of hours. Still, with as uncomfortable as I was and all the contractions, I wanted to know what was going on down there.
Not dilated AT ALL. She said that a 1 would be "generous." She couldn't even find my cervix. I had to get in this weird position with my hands behind my hips sort of lifting them for her to even feel it. AND the baby wasn't even remotely engaged. Totally not what I wanted to hear. I may or may not have called Jerad almost in tears saying that it looked like I would be pregnant forever.
As a last ditch effort, I put this on my calendar scheduled for the next day:
If I write something on the calendar or a to-do list I get that shit DONE even if it kills me. It's a character bonus/flaw I have. I did it as a joke, but little did I know that I'd be holding my baby the next night!
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