Week 39: Going mad
when my father was dying/died earlier this year, my mother was obsessed with signs. a bird outside the window, a strange phone call, a mis-behaving tivo. you name it, it was a sign. or at least, she wanted me to tell her if i thought it was a sign or not. repeatedly (and gently) i told her that anything can be a sign of anything and if they made her feel better it was a good thing and not to worry to much.
i am experiencing my own “sign” frenzy. every time something happens that’s a “sign” of impending labor i start to get excited, or at least anxious for it to confirm itself as a *true* sign of pregnancy.
examples? on friday i had some spotting. while rational-me kept reminding the rest of me that spotting after a checkup is normal, irrational-wanna-baby-now-me kept reminding the rest of me that i’d never spotted after a checkup before and maybe it was a bit pinker than brown even if it was very thin, so it could still be the bloody show (great name, huh) and one of those “within 48 hours” signs i’ve been waiting for.
but it wasn’t.
on sunday, my digestive track decided it was done dealing with my food for a while. often, within about 4 to 48 hours before labor begins, a woman can get nauseous and/or have diarrhea as her body begins to prioritize labor over food. rational-me pointed out that after the choices i’d made over the past few days (diner food, heavy cream pasta sauces, etc), it was really not surprising that i might have some … discomfort followed by some diarrhea. irrational-wanna-baby-now-me quickly countered with how different my bowels were behaving even though my diet hadn’t *really* changed all that much. when a normal, sensible meal offered the same speedy result as the greasy stuff, iwbn-me almost managed to get the rest of me on board. had it not been for the complete and utter lack of really-real impending labor signs (no show, not even some faux-contractions) i think i might have gone completely crazy. or, you know, into actual labor. today everything is back to “normal,” however, so i can’t even cling to the end date of that “sign”.
and the thing is, short of actual labor things that will cause me to directly go to the hospital or at least call someone, there’s nothing left to happen that’s going to impress. the best “here it comes!” set-up has a “within 4 hours to a few days” timeframe, and guess what? i’m 3 days out from the due date my last ultrasound pegged me at, 5 days from my dr’s due date, and 7 from what i would consider the *real* due date, once my ovulation cycle is factored into the math. i fully expect my doctor to schedule an induction appointment at my next checkup (wednesday) for the week after my due date.
so yeah, it’s probably going to be within 4 hours to a few days from now, signs or no signs.
yesterday i told a friend that i preferred signless days to sign-full days because then at least i wasn’t driving myself crazy hoping against rationality. turns out it really doesn’t matter anymore. sign-less days (like today) are their own kind of “where the hell did my signs go?” crazy-making.
to top off all the sign-crazy, i’m getting a bit irrational. (yeah, i know, “getting”) it seems like my breasts are shrinking for some reason. if i lie (lay?) in certain positions in bed, it sort of feels like i don’t have a belly anymore. i have this weird moments when i’m waking up where i really feel like instead of giving birth, i’m just going to slowly become un-pregnant over the next 9 months. like we missed some sort of window and my body’s just going to shut down the show. it takes me a considerable moment for biology to convince me otherwise.
i’ve got to hand it to charlotte, though. throughout all of this crazy, she’s stayed active without being frantic. it’s a constant, stabilizing reminder that while things may be unpredictable and worrisome out here, inside she’s perfectly fine. and really, signs and craziness and irrationality and impatience aside, that’s what’s most important to all of us.