Still no baby.

It's seven days past.
How much longer can she grow
tucked under my ribs?

She's getting evicted next Friday, that's all I'm saying. And you want to know what I'm worried about? I'm worried about what happens when your surgery is scheduled for the same time you normally poo. I know you're not supposed to eat for 12 hours before hand, but I usually don't eat for 12 hours before the poo. Simon says enema. I say he knows me better. I think I'll just binge on hot peppers and grapefruit the day before and hope for the best. Perhaps that will have the same effect as castor oil and everything will end happily.

TMI, I'm sure,
ephelba

No baby.

That's how I start all my phone conversations- "No baby". A surprising number of people have called to ask if there is a baby, as if I had birthed her in a closet and was trying to keep her existence a secret.

I'm up to 560 on my RSS feed. Couldn't care less. Hardly check my email. Mostly, what I do is go to checkups where the baby squirms out from under the monitor and dooms me to another 5 or 10 minutes of monitoring.

I'm only 5 days past my due date. Honestly, I expect it to be next week sometime. This is awkward, because Simon's mom is here now, and she'll be leaving next Weds. It's conceivable she could have made the whole trip and been here for two weeks without seeing the baby before she goes home.

Boy, too, would be devastated if that happens. He's leaving with her, and the thought of not being here when the Bean arrives makes him Very Sad.

Wish me luck,
ephelba

PS:
Lest you worry I'm not trying, I'll list the measures we've undertaken so far:
Eating eggplant
Eating walnuts
Eating mushrooms
Eating Evening Primrose Oil
Sticking said oil up the wahoo
Sex alone
Sex with someone
Sex with an eggplant

I think waiting it out is what's going to work.

Still waiting...

Waiting and waiting.
She's bean-curled, comfy. I'm not.
Come out already!

I cleaned up after everyone else went to bed. Does that mean I'm nesting and the baby's coming now? It's just that she's still growing and I don't have any more room for her to move into...

She's so big it's easy to feel her parts through my belly skin. Somehow I still can't figure out what she's doing in there. Is that an arm, or a leg? If this is her bum, where has her head gone? What the hell is she doing in there that makes my leg hurt? Do the wiggles mean she's happy, or do they mean she can't get comfy with my rib all up in her business like that?

My stepmother and I have decided that the ideal arraignment would be something more marsupial. You grow a baby, it comes out and you stick in a pouch for a couple of weeks (months?) whilst you recover from pregnancy. We think it's kinda harsh to go through all that only to be rewarded with something that needs care at all hours. Maybe, since this one WILL be nursing, and since I have a sling, the first couple of months will turn out that way.

A girl can dream,
ephelba

I can have the baby now.

Boy brought down her clothes and diapers from the attic. Friends came over to help sort, and we went through three bins and a trash bag of old Peanut clothes in no time.

Of course, I did not haul myself up to the attic to see if Boy had gotten everything. He assured me he had. Instead, I stewed for two days wondering why we hadn't run across my favorite baby hat. Today I go upstairs and immediately see three (THREE!) clear plastic bags and a lidless box full of baby clothes.

Sigh.

He's such a help though. Yesterday I went to the grocery store, and I would surely have given up and gone home had he not been there to bend over for me. Why do they even Have a bottom shelf? Seriously!

And he did clean the stairwell for me. Top to bottom. Swept,vacuumed and mopped. Now if we burned his shoes instead of leaving them out there to stink and fester it would be show worthy. Point is, he did the work by himself just so I wouldn't have to, and he did it well enough that I don't have to do the work a second time after him.

Simon's been a big help too. He's been cooking dinner and helping keep the kitchen from becoming a disaster zone. He takes care of Peanut when I'm sick of her climbing on my belly. He smoothes things with Boy when I'm Hormonal Bitch Mom. And he works 50 hours a week. The man deserves a medal.

The point of all this, I guess, is just to say that between the three of us we've gotten enough done that I won't panic if I go into labor now. I'm actually looking forward to it Very Much. This baby just feels too big for my insides.

Urg,
ephelba

Ouch

Yeah, labor does hurt, but honestly there's a lot of hurting beforehand. My hip has been bugging me for months, and there's heartburn, and backaches, and kicks in your soft bits and headaches....

Today has been very uncomfortable in the belly. Not contractions. Weird pulls and things. Of course, not being one to keep this to myself when I could complain to Simon, I whine. He looked at me askance and asked "Do you have a bag packed?"

"I'm so not in labor."

"But you do have a bag packed..."

"This is really not labor!"

"You're not supposed to wait till you go into labor to pack the bag!"
He's a smart man, that's why I married him:)

Oooo! Oooo! And I have a Boy story!
So Boy is in his room reading, and Simon and I are just outside his door talking, and the dog is going nuts because it's chow time for her. I say "Is there something you need, little dog?" (Hint hint hint to the Boy, whose job it is to feed said dog.)

No response.

I say it again, "What do you need, little dog?"

Nothing.

Just for the grownup's amusement I say "IceCreamIs there something you need little dog?" because it's magic how the kid always hears when you say "Ice Cream" but never "Boy! Get in here!"

About two seconds later his head pops out and he says "What does the dog need?"

At which point I laughed till I peed. Boy swears he never heard me say "Ice Cream", and is offended by the notion that he would respond to that, but I swear, it was damn near Pavlovian.

I'll get around to packing the damn bag tomorrow, I'm sure,
ephelba

Sweetness and Light

Isn't that what I'm supposed to feel right now?

I am a woman on the edge. A bitch. A bad mom. Too lazy to take her daughter out the house- too grumpy to talk to her son instead of yell at him. Too tired to cook or clean.

When I think of the new baby, all I can imagine is the lack of sleep it means. That I'm going to go through all the work of pushing her out and not have any way to rest back up. That we're going to go back to the dark ages where I couldn't keep the house clean or have dinner on the table ever ever (as opposed to now, when I pull it off sometimes). That I'm going to remain a moody, useless, bad-mom bitch.

Frankly, if I think about it too much, I cry. That's not what the reaction to the thought of a new baby is supposed to be, is it?

I'm just so tired already. I can't imagine how a baby will help.

Maybe this is all just hormones though. I remember it was about this time when I was pregnant with Peanut that I found out my mom was going to stay with us for a week or two to "Help". Every time Simon brought it up I sobbed. I couldn't mention it without tearing up, even at work. I was convinced it was going to be the worst disaster ever, and the thought of having to deal with mom-shit when I had just had a baby was too much. Simon was ready to tell her to fuck off. In the end, everything was fine. Really. She was on her best behavior and actually helped us out a lot. So maybe this will be the same way. I'm all moody and hormonal now, but when we actually get to that point things won't be so bad.


Shit,
ephelba

Not going to happen.

The other night I dreamed I went to my checkup and they said I was already pregnant with kiddo number four. That would be, I had gotten pregnant whilst I was pregnant. I said "That can't happen!" The midwife said "It's really rare."

Both the real world midwife and my husband found it amusing.

Somebody's getting fixed, that's all I'm saying,
ephelba