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Warning: I've been writing this post for the better part of the last 24 hours, but apparently, my pregnant brain is incapable of focusing for more than ... what was I saying? I apologize in advance for the randomness you're about to read.
Last night, as is my custom, I sat on the floor next to Teyla's bed and surfed the Internet while I waited for my two-year-old to fall asleep and give me back my arm. (I am her security blanket. Lately, her favorite coping mechanism is to stroke my upper arm. "Arm, Mommy! Arm!" she cries if I dare to take my arm away to type a new web address. So I sit and click on links and type one-handed and we get along just fine.)
Lacking anything better to do, I Googled "signs labor is imminent" just for kicks.
I compiled the following list:
1. Spurt of energy / nesting
2. Loss of mucus plug / bloody show
3. Over-active intestinal system
4. Rupture of membranes
5. Cervix dilation and effacement
(Did I lose all my male readers around mucus plug? Most likely. Carry on.)
I'll spare you graphic details, but let me say this: I have four of the five symptoms down pat. (And the last? My water never breaks until the doctor reaches for the knitting needle. My Mom believes we have the Teflon bag gene. So I don't think that one will ever get crossed off my list.)
To be clear, I am aware -- very, very aware -- that these signs mean I might go into labor tonight, or I might wait two more weeks until my induction date. They should be labeled "Signs of Imminent Labor. Or Not."
That said, I did end up spending some quality time in a mumu Monday morning during a surprise trip to Labor and Delivery. The whole story is over at 5 Minutes for Parenting today. And I am a bundle of contractions lately. I have an OB appointment in the morning. I will be very interested to see if I'm still dilating progressively. Given that I was at 2 centimeters last Friday and 3 centimeters on Monday, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm at 4 tomorrow. Or 5. Or even a 3. Heck, this childbirth stuff isn't an exact science.
No wonder I'm so distractable.
Oh! And I took some pictures tonight to show y'all the watermelon I'm sporting these days, and I seriously couldn't keep a straight face. I mean, LOOK AT ME.
That's ridiculous. And crazy. And bizarre.
I keep reminding myself that I am enlarged in the waiting. For a single guy, Paul sure knew what he was talking about. Amen and amen.
Thursday afternoon update: Still at 3 centimeters, 50% effaced. No significant change from Monday morning. I'm a little surprised, but then again, I'm not. If I've learned anything this week, it's that the last weeks of pregnancy are unpredictable.
I hated Phoenix.I hated everything about it with the fiery white intensity of a thousand suns – which, not so coincidentally, felt like exact temperature of my car steering wheel after it baked in the 120-degree July heat for eight hours while I typed in a cubicle. (I had to wear oven mitts to drive home.) I hated the cactus-and-rock yards. I hated the miles of pink stucco houses with red tile roofs. I hated the flatness of the terrain. I hated the way the sun glinted off the cars in the midday sun. I hated that the thermometer rarely dipped below 95, even at night. Most of all, I hated the dry barrenness of the desert. I grew up in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. My favorite t-shirt proclaimed, “Water is life.” And I lived it. I spent every free minute of the summer swimming and water-skiing and diving and boating in the cool, clean lakes around my home. I loved taking a nap on the floating raft on Lake Johanna and waking up to the sound of boat motors and cottonwood leaves dancing on the breeze. My world was blue and green.Until my new husband and I accepted a job relocation to Arizona. Then my world was orange and red and brown. No green. No blue.Just a smear of ugly. Friends who grew up in Phoenix tried to convince me of the dessert’s beauty. They took me to Sedona. “Isn’t it beautiful?” they would sigh as we drove past grotesque mounds of exposed rock. No. To me, it looked dead and hellish and like God threw the leftovers of sin here and let them rot.They took me to Pleasant Lake, a man-made reservoir north of Phoenix, hoping to assuage my desperate thirst for water. I found a muddy brown puddle set in the middle of more cactus and scrub bushes, with dead trees on the shores. It was neither a lake nor pleasant.To be fair, this was my first real time moving away from home. I wasn’t just dealing with a new climate. I was trying to cope with a new marriage and a new job and a new life, even as I mourned the loss of family and friends and familiarity. And water. I didn’t see how I would ever find comfort in the desolation. How could this be home? How could I relate to people who planted saguaro in their front yard on purpose? How could I cope with being inside all summer due to the blistering heat, with the thought that I would be wearing flip-flops and tank tops and still sweating in October, with the blisters on my thighs from those sneaky sizzling seatbelt buckles?And then we moved. Eight months after we moved to Phoenix, Corey’s company offered him another job relocation – this time, to (blessed, green, temperate, seaside) San Diego. I wish I had known Phoenix was only a season. Maybe I wouldn’t have complained so much. Maybe I would have enjoyed the adventure. Maybe I would have looked for God in the desert instead of always and only looking at me.
Maybe.
Are y'all tired of me talking about the pregnancy yet? It will all be over in three weeks, I promise. My OB has amicably agreed to induce me at 39 weeks -- which was three weeks from yesterday, not that anyone's counting. But of course, there's a good chance this baby boy will come before that, seeing as I dilated early with both Connor and Teyla. We'll find out more at my doctor's appointment tomorrow morning. (I go every week from now on. Which details do you not want to know?)My post at 5 Minutes for Parenting yesterday details the one question that makes me twitchy at this point in the pregnancy. People can comment on my growing belly without me batting an eyelash. But ask me this? And I get all crazy inside.I will say this, though: I think I feel better now, at 36 weeks, than I did two months ago. Physical therapy has all but healed my falling apart disease, and thanks to the cleaners, I rarely bend over these days, which saves my back. Plus, it's GOR-GEE-OUS here. It's been sunny and in the low 70s all week. (Just a reality check: Normal high for now is about 52.) I'm realizing, once again, how deeply my outlook is affected by sunlight.
When I came downstairs from my nap-with-Teyla yesterday (a regular afternoon happening lately, for which this 36-week-preggo is thankful), I found my two older kids quietly playing with Legos and watching an episode of "America's Funniest Videos" we had DVR'd. Two minutes later, as I was putzing in the kitchen, I heard Natalie start to wail. As in sackcloth-and-ashes Middle Eastern-type wail. I turned around and saw my sweet eight-year-old with bright red eyes and tears streaming down her cheeks."That commercial made me cry," she sobbed and threw her head into a pillow.Want to guess which commercial it was?
--
Update:
First, I'd like to say if it was me crying at a commercial, I would be crying at one of those super-creepy Burger King king commercials. Seriously. Those are a horror move in the making.
But Natalie's not me. And Misti guessed it. Natalie was crying at the Sarah McLachlan SPCA commercial, which is Exhibit A in manipulative fundraising.
I'm going to resist a rant here, but appeals like that steam me. They are designed to make people feel guilty and sad and pathetic that they haven't fed their fish today. I have no problem with nonprofits raising money and awareness; that's the whole point of Corey's job, to facilitate that kind of transaction. But there is a respectful way to do it and an oh-so-wrong-way to do it. Nonprofits that feel the need to resort to pictures of abused, caged animals or children with horrible birth defects do not deserve money or attention. They are exploitative.
And yes, as Mocha with Linda pointed out, Natalie does have a tender heart, especially when it comes to animals. Last night, when she overheard me telling Corey about The Incident, she put her hands over her ears, teared up and said, "Mom! Please don't talk about it!"
Pitiful.
Maybe Sarah McLachlan can make a commercial about the kids the SPCA has traumatized under the guise of awareness.
Yesterday morning, I woke up 15 minutes earlier than normal. I saw this as a good sign, seeing as the morning school routine can go from smooth to crazy in a matter of nanoseconds.
I showered, got dressed, made the beds. The kids woke up in high spirits and got themselves ready in record time. I was feeling good.
"This is going so great," I thought to myself. "I should even have a few extra minutes to pick up the remaining toys for the cleaners coming today."
(Famous last words, no?)
I rounded the corner to the kids' bathroom -- and I saw Teyla squatting next to a vast puddle of slime on the carpet. Six bottles of kids' shampoo and body wash were next to her, in various states of dismemberment. Two were empty.
Upside? Everything smelled like coconut.
"Oh. Teyla. No." I moaned.
I gathered up the empty bottles and threw them in the trash. I gathered up the remorseful toddler (who had a stinky diaper, to add insult to injury) and deposited her firmly in the bathtub. I gathered up the half-full bottles, coated with strawberry and banana and coconut ooze, and tossed them under running water in the sink, where bubbles immediately began to foam into a miniature volcano of suds. I gathered what was left of my sanity and decided it was highly over-rated anyway.
I managed to scrape the top layer of goop off the carpet and then, at a total loss, I threw an extra beach towel over the crime scene and left (now a few minutes late) for school and MOPS.
This morning, a sweet young man from the carpet cleaners came and wiped Teyla's sins away. And lo, the carpet is clean and the pink stains are gone and the aroma of coconut still lingers in the air.
I wish all my mistakes smelled like sunscreen.
I can no longer turn on my garbage disposal.
My belly is so big, it doesn't allow me to reach all the way back to the wall behind the sink to flip the switch. (I have managed to compensate. If I stand on my tip-toes, I can get my belly ABOVE the counter and flick the switch quickly before I fall backwards and start to breath again.)
Corey looked at me last weekend and started to laugh and said, "You are just the weirdest shape right now!"And then he took this picture, which made us both laugh for about 20 minutes. 
Because, let's face it -- I am the weirdest shape. There are some things about pregnancy that are just plain bizarre. I wrote about a few random pregnancy happenings over at 5 Minutes for Parenting today; one of them is my favorite Teyla story of the week. As for me, I'm thinking I could make up for the lack of a second ultrasound by doing a belly cast and painting it like a watermelon. Now that would be unique.
