The Once and Future Blog

The Once and Future Blog
...shadows of the world appear...

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

I feel good. This is not good.

38 weeks, 3 days today, and strangely enough I feel great. Last week was tough - for some reason, last Wednesday was the worst I've felt this entire pregnancy. I was just too tired and sore and big and lumbering to even walk more than a few steps. The next morning, though, I woke up feeling fantastic, and I've been fine ever since. Sure, I feel big (hell, I AM big) and I'm noticing more cramps and pressure, but overall I have more energy than I've had in a while. The thing is - this almost sort of upsets me. The less overly pregnant I feel, the further away the birth seems. I have no idea if this is true - in fact, some people keep telling me that the increased energy is a sign of impending labor. I guess we'll see. I DID find myself reorganizing the medicine cabinets on Friday afternoon, so maybe that was the fabled "nesting."

I had a false alarm on Saturday night. Andy had just gone to sleep and I was up reading when all of a sudden my stomach and my back started to hurt simultaneously and I started to get what felt like menstrual cramps, as well as a few Braxton-Hicks contractions. Nothing seemed to be connected - i.e., the B-H didn't seem to be correlated to the various parts of me that hurt - but the pain didn't go away, even when I lay down and tried to sleep. I thought about waking up Andy, then decided I would time the contractions and see if there was a pattern. There wasn't, so I got up and got a drink of water, wandered around the house awhile, used the bathroom, and waited.

Nothing happened, but the pain lessened just a bit. I went back to bed and read for a while longer. Nothing changed. Finally the pain had dulled to the point where I thought I'd be able to sleep, so I turned out the light and figured that if things were going to progress, the pain would wake me up again.

I woke up the next day feeling fine. *Sigh* I have no idea if I was having false labor or if it was something I ate or what. Some days I'm convinced that when labor does start, I won't know it and the baby will be born on the living room floor because I won't have time to go to the hospital.

I had my 38-week appointment today. One promising thing is that when I described what happened on Saturday night, the doctor looked thoughtful and said "Hmmm," rather than dismissing it out of hand. The other good news is that I've dropped, and the baby's head is engaged! (I kind of had a feeling, based on the fact that I've been feeling movement much lower down.) TMI warning: I am also "soft," although my cervix is still too high up to say how soft. Hey, every little bit counts.

The doctor had me schedule ultrasound for Saturday to check the baby's weight and my fluid levels. I can't wait to see him again! (And I hope he's not 10 pounds.)

Andy is getting increasingly giddy. I am too - I'm nervous about the unknown, which I keep trying to describe to Andy. It's not that I don't know how to do things like change a diaper or get up in the middle of the night or dress a baby. It's more like being about to jump out of an airplane - you aren't so much afraid of the parachute not opening, you're more afraid of the sensation of falling, because you haven't felt it before. (I'm comparing the sensation of falling to the experience of not being a parent one minute, and being someone's mom the next - not so much to the experience of giving birth.) You know that most likely everything's going to be OK - great, even. You just don't know exactly what it's going to BE like.

But just when I start to get freaked out about "Oh my God, I'm not ready, how can I be SOMEONE'S MOM?" - I think about what it's going to be like when my son is put in my arms for the first time. I imagine how it's going to feel to look at this tiny creature that Andy and I made, and how much I'm going to love him. And when I think of that, that's when I know that everything's going to be all right.

posted by Tricia | 3:38 PM