I am down to the single digits. It seems like only yesterday I was shocked to learn it was 99 days until my due date - double digits. And now here I am, waiting to give birth. And yet I still don't believe that I am pregnant, despite a belly that sticks out into the next time zone. I guess I have to assume the doctor knows what she's talking about, that the belly isn't, as I suspect, just made up of all the cookies I've eaten over the past nine months.
So to humor the nice doctor I am proceeding as if I will in fact have a baby sooner rather than later. I spend a lot of my time, time that should be spent working or paying attention to where I am walking, wondering what this new, unfamiliar ache or pain might be. Last night I sat up as a sharp pain hit my side and thought, "Oh my God! This must be it! I should wake Tom!" Then I farted. Turns out it was not labor, just the broccoli I'd had for dinner.
In my defense, my organs are so randomly distributed at this point that it really is difficult to pinpoint previously obvious sensations until they manifest themselves somehow (oh, I have to pee! when I go a little in my pants or oh, I'm hungry! when I pass out at my desk, etc).
Tom and I have been spending all our free time preparing for the birth by reading endless books and pamphlets that helpful institutions send us on a regular basis under the assumption that we are two babbling idiots who should never have procreated. We get literature from every direction - the doctor, the insurance company, the hospital - daily, explaining to us using small words that we should feed our baby a lot and not poor hot water on it. Once we had those basics down, we ventured out on our own and bought a slew of books on child rearing, each with a contradictory approach, all of which make complete sense, which is enough to turn you into a babbling idiot if you didn't start out as one. I want to give birth just so I can stop reading all this theory and put it in practice before I forget everything. It's like studying for the SAT - although you feel compelled to continue cramming until the last minute, at some point your brain is full and will hold no more. You just want to take the fucking test already.
So with all this cramming and aches and pains and memorization of factoids (no pacifier until 2 weeks old. No wait, 2 months. No wait - Time's up! You get an incomplete on the "Things Baby Can Suck On That Won't Scar Them for Life" portion of the test) is it any wonder I can't sleep? And as long as I can't sleep, I might as well be taking care of a newborn. Yet I am still 9 days away from my due date, and we all know babies are rarely punctual. Plus, this is Tom's baby, and if she follows in his footsteps she will definitely not be on time. So I wait. And spend a lot of time with my head cocked to one side, reaching deep within myself to determine if this current little tug in my belly heralds the onset of the most challenging event of my life, or just lactose intolerance.
