Countdown

I suppose I should write considering that this child could come any minute now and then I won't be the pregnant woman anymore, but the one with a baby. So, perhaps this is one of my last postings as a pregnant woman (and until I am pregnant again), or perhaps I will find the energy to write again.

Horrible night last night. I have a feeling his arrival is imminent and last night I was tossing and turning and feeling cramps. Added to this, I have a bad cold and so had to swap sides all night so I could breathe. Added to this, I am coughing a lot and read somewhere that coughing can start labor! So, I am trying to cough in a subdued manner. Bizarrely, the last two nights I have woken up many times to the sound of my own moaning in my sleep! Very strange. I think I go into some kind of mini-labor at night but then wake up and it goes away.

All this to say, I feel like crap. I get why women talk about these last few days/weeks as some of the most difficult. Maybe not as difficult as those first months for me (the horror), but hard in a different way. Right now, he is technically due in 11 days (the 24th), however I am thinking that around the 21st/22nd, if he hasn't come by then, I will try and kick start it. I plan to walk a lot and possibly drink castor oil to get labor going. I am not that worried about going a week past my due date, but anything more will make me nervous as I do not want to get induced.

Now that I am sick I keep telling the little guy to WAIT. But last night in my dreamless, moaning state, I was convinced he was coming. It's a strange place to be. I know all women have gone through these last few weeks always vigilant to the signs of labor...

I mostly just feel rotten. Tired. Heavy. Precarious.

And sometimes I get freaked out at the thought of my life never being the same again. There was me. Now there is me and another person forever linked. It's different than a romantic relationship, this one is indelible. And I worry about ever being spontaneous again. About how I will logistically operate in the world now.

And I also worry about the baby being born healthy and those initial few weeks....

Anyway. It's a train that has left the station. As I sit here and write I feel cramps again...

No poetic words. My life is about to get real. No longer a girl. Time to be a woman.

He will come when he is ready. When our bodies align. When the timing is right.

Until then, I will moan about feeling all kinds of strange things.