I've been trying to lurk a bit the last week, but I haven't posted because my sister was in town to help out. Which she did--we got a lot of arranging/organizing done, and she put several meals' worth of pancakes, etc. into the freezer for me. Post-partum, breakfast is always hard for me--I'm not a morning person to begin with, and my babies have always liked to cluster feed in the morning. So it will be nice to have my 7yo just throw some pancakes in the toaster and voila! As easy as store-bought toaster waffles, and way more nutritious/delicious!
My "official" EDD is tomorrow. All my babies except the last one were born by 38 weeks, so making it this far....and still no clue of how much farther....is quite strange. I actually feel pretty peaceful about it, maybe just to spite everyone around me, LOL! My best friend is calling me constantly, and every time I have a twinge, she's like, "What can you do to keep it going? Go walk/have sex/drink some cohosh tincture QUICK!!!"
Even my midwife is starting to put the pressure on a bit...at my last appt (Thurs), she commented on how much bigger the baby feels to her just in the last week, and she gave me some tinctures and herbs to try...and pretty much commanded us to have sex 2x per day, and 3x if dh could make it home for lunch!
Which, fine, we are definitely not opposed to that, but when she called the next morning to "check on me" and her first question was "have you had sex yet?" I found it a bit...umm...invasive! :rollseyes Really??
And she's pulling the "big baby" card which is extremely annoying! I mean, yes, it's probably gonna be a "big" baby--my dh is 6'6" and neither one of us is small! My smallest baby was over eight&ahalf pounds, so anything smaller than that would truly surprise me. But I have a well-proven pelvis, and oh yeah,
I'm not even at 40 weeks yet!!!! So why are we worrying about this??
Honestly, I'm really tired of the prodromal stuff. I've never had this before. Every other baby, I had nothing--maybe a few BH ctx, but not even many of them--until the wee hours of the morning when I woke up and *knew* it was for real, and had a baby in my arms with in 15 hours.
This time, I'm having a couple hrs every evening of more-than-BH-but-less-than-labor, and again every morning for an hour or two between 3 and 6 am. It is exhausting, and discouraging, and frustrating. I have so much sympathy now for those who have BTDT before...I never understood it until now. I'm starting to distrust and second-guess myself. Some of my friends think it's encouraging to tell me "Well, just think, when you really hit REAL labor, it will probably go faster!" And that's not all that comforting....my midwife and doula are both nearly 2 hours away!!
I made the mistake of googling "prodromal labor" today, and nearly every hit emphasized the psychological component--the idea that it is caused by the mother not really being "ready" to give birth for some emotional reason or other.....and of course, now that's rattling around in my brain...I thought that I'd dealt with that stuff. Thought I'd found a better place to be in. Thought I'd surrendered that control and fear and so forth. So what's holding me back? Or is it me at all?
I know that my other babies' being early has done a number on me, so that now just on the verge of 40 weeks, I feel like I'm already 2 weeks late. And the prodromal stuff is exacerbating that immensely.
I need to find a way to reframe all of this, put it into proper perspective. Because what if what I think is a sense of peace/lack of impatience is really a sense of dread/denial or something that is holding me (and baby) back?
I think I need to ignore the phone (and esp. Facebook!) for awhile.
Such a strange, strange time for me....
I'd better go to bed now, in case I wake up in labor!
I can't even say it with a straight face any more....it sounds like an over-told joke!
