Very low

So, I went to the doctor yesterday. It was not a great experience. I want to say the doctors here suck, but doctors suck all over the world. What I miss is any kind of tenderness. Any awareness that it is another person's body they are tampering with. Not a conglomeration of skin and cells to be meddled with. I say this because I had asked the doctor to take a look at my pee-exhausted nether regions to make sure all looked normal and healthy. I have been peeing every ten minutes or so lately and I have felt quite raw. So, I put my legs up in those insane stirrups (they don't use the stirrups in Australia or the U.S. to my recollection) and he jams/rams/slams his hand (although it feels like an arm) up inside me. It hurt. It hurt a lot. And it also hurt because I wasn't ready for this "assault" and as I had said, the whole area is tender and sensitive. As he squirmed inside he said, "The baby's head is very low, very low".

After he took his hand/arm out he again repeated the verdict. And, "You will deliver before your delivery date. Very soon probably".

I ambled back to the chair almost in tears. Why? More because of the sense of invasion I felt. Of my own corporeal privacy and the privacy of the baby itself. It didn't need its head felt by this man. It was a strange feeling. The realness of it all hit home. There was something in me and it has to come out. And his little head can be felt inside me, ready, waiting to come out...

I emailed the woman who I hope to have as my birth doula when I returned home. Eager to seek comfort in a more gentle wisdom. She told me that the head being low isn't necessarily a indicator and women can even deliver late even if the head is "engaged". I went online and found a lot which asserts this also.

So, so, now I am not sure what to think except that I don't feel ready, however will I ever?

This is life. No control. Never ready for what is next. And again, who would have thought, this day a year ago I would meet the father of this baby? Not me. I was walking slowly to the cafe where I would end up meeting him, lethargic, annoyed, not really paying attention to the foot prints I was leaving in the brown dust road. Foot prints. Feet, that would take me to
him
and the
"very low" head
inside
me.