Great Expectations: Heather @ 38 weeks

Almost 39 weeks! I am still feeling very calm beneath it all. Somewhere under the extreme agitation and impatience that strike every night at about 9:00, I am calm and relatively at peace with this process. It's even fairly amusing. I feel so good I think I could do another trimester (I think it will take that long for anything to change), except that I can't always get comfortable, sleep, or communicate.

Perhaps you won't mind if I simply run over the little highlights of the last two weeks? I don't remember exactly what order they happened in, but there are some vague images of:

Last two visits with the doula. We solidified our plans, focused on changes fears and discomforts into positive hopes and images, and I decided Preston could talk to all the people and make necessary decisions on his own. I'm not talking to anyone if I can help it.

Touring Labor and Delivery. This was a big emotional step backward. It's a very nice, very well equipped, very cold, big place full of very nice nurses who have me very labeled as soon as they find out who my doctor is. They're really trying to bridge the gap in philosophy, I can tell. I like and appreciate them and their efforts to help me, but I think I'm going to struggle with being comfortable there. So I've tried to make a list of simple things that would put me more at ease. The first is that I have to deliver on a rainy day.

Getting my membranes stripped. No judging. Not even when you hear I did it for curiosity almost as much as impatience. I lost my mucus plug, but that's about it. It's actually one of the few cheats I've tried, and I don't think I'm going to bother with much else.

Being minorly chastised by my own daughter, at an unprecedented young age. I was bouncing on my exercise ball and trying to think myself into labor when she checked in on my meditation session to tell me that she had some things to finish before she wanted to come, so could I please be a little more patient? I humbly apologized, and have beenat least less desperate since. Oops.

A fun baby shower with the women from church. I think I talked a lot. A lot a lot, and I sounded like a know-it-all, which is amusing because I've hardly started. But I had fun, and got a chance to consider again how nice these women are. Most have known me since I was a child, so it's strange to be assuming the roles that I've seen them filling for the past 15 years. I don't feel that mature. Still, I felt safe and cared for, and appreciated all they had to say. We don't all have the same perspective on birth options and other things, but we all had a chance to share our thoughts and be respected for them. At least, that's how I felt, and I hope they did, too. I had a lot of thoughts to share, I know.

Jumbled in with this is a lot of not sleeping, trying to catch up on sleep, being hungry and not wanting to cook, cleaning and organizing, being too tired to clean and organize, feeling great, feeling moody, feeling nervous, feeling lonely and calling my husband a few times in the night while he's busy at work, playing Sudoku, and waiting, waiting, waiting. Here's to another three weeks of fun! I can take it! Just don't mind the mood swings. I'm going to go pretend to sleep, now.