or maybe tomorrow

I understand now. He just wants to be a July baby. He’s going to be a manly little boy and doesn’t want his birthstone to be a pearl. (Each new doctor who does an ultrasound makes certain to point out his very obvious “boy parts”.) A ruby is a much more suitable birthstone for a little boy.

Jim thinks he’ll be born tomorrow, the first of July. I don’t have any other dates in my head. I had the 21st of June, the 24th and the 27th in my head, but those didn’t happen. Maybe daddy knows better in our case.

Tomorrow would be a great day to have a baby. I’ve been in false/pre/I-don’t-know-what-kind-of labor for a week now, and today these contractions are finally starting to hurt every time. They’ve been consistant, ten minutes apart, for a few hours now – but they’ve done that before and turned out to be nothing. But one thing that must be true is that pain means we’re moving in the right direction. Though I don’t even know how I’ll recognize the real thing when it does happen.

We’ve been to the hospital three times this week. Wednesday for nonstress testing. Thursday for a re-test. They told us to bring all of our hospital bags, just in case. Of course, all the neighbors saw us pack up the car. Then this morning because I thought I might be leaking fluid, my doctor said to go in and get checked out. We packed up the car with all of our stuff again – and it turned out it wasn’t amniotic fluid (I’ll spare you all the exact details). This time we left all the bags in the car, and they’re staying there until we have a baby to take home. The neighbors must think we’re absolute airheads at this point.

So if this pattern were to continue, we would end up there again tomorrow. And since I’m not going back there again to leave without my baby, I’m not going back until his head is half hanging out.

But as uncomfortable as this all is, I am glad my doctors seem to favor a more natural approach. In all these trips to the hospital, it seems women just get induced the second they go overdue. I’ve had several nurses say to me, “Oh you poor girl, they’re torturing you.” But no, it must be better for labor to begin on its own.

So we’re still just hanging out. I’ve been entertaining myself with various birth stories, both funny and terrifying at the same time.

Speaking of terrifying, while in triage this morning, waiting to hear about my fluid or non-fluid issue, watching my little soccer player kick the shit out of his fetal heart monitor, there was another woman who came in already in transition. The curtain around my bed was closed so we could only hear her, and God, it was scary. The pain in her voice, like she was being slowly tortured to death. Is that really going to happen to me? Eeek!