Hurry Up and Wait

Nine months is a really long time. It seems like I should know what it feels like to wait after Matt's deployment to Afghanistan (he was gone for 15 months), but that was over four years ago and apparently I've since forgotten how much waiting sucks. During all my whining and complaining about how LONG I've been pregnant (which started a while ago, but picked up momentum when I reached full term at 37 weeks), I keep trying to remind myself that a couple weeks is really not that long, but it amazes me how relative time is - when you notice the passing of time, it feels like time passes slower.

The longest pregnancy recorded (that ended in a live birth) was 375 days back in 1945, so it would appear I have no room to complain over my measly 280 or so days. I really couldn't imagine being pregnant for 3 additional months. I keep telling Roger he seriously needs to consider making his debut pretty quickly here. Matt tells me jokingly that I've been "selfishly hogging our son" but I've assured him on multiple occasions that were there any way for me to SHARE the pregnancy with him, I would gladly pass that torch.

In Googling for the longest pregnancy ever, I stumbled across some other interesting pregnancy facts; like, for example, at any given time about 4% of women in the United States are pregnant. Pregnant women blend in well. Until my husband and I started trying to conceive (and subsequently I became pregnant), I never realized just how many pregnant women there are out there walking (or in some cases waddling) around. Now I notice them EVERYWHERE (and not just at my OBGYNs office which would obviously be a given...): baseball games, the grocery store, the mall (though admittedly I am mostly around the Motherhood Maternity store when I go to the mall these days). I'm sure there's a great deal of psychology involved in the "blind eye" we turn on things that are wholly unimportant to us - in fact, I'm almost positive I remember watching a grainy video on the very subject in my Psych 101 class - but I don't remember the small details behind those workings of the human brain.

These days the average size of a full term baby is 8 pounds (30 years ago it was 6 pounds). I suspect it's due to the discovery of alcohol and cigarettes being bad for you during pregnancy. Or we're just breeding a super race of large people. The BIGGEST baby every born was 23 pounds. My 8 month old niece is about 23 pounds right now. The thought of giving birth to a baby that size... ouch. The largest baby ever born that actually survived after its birth was 19.2 pounds which is absolutely unbelievable. That was just last year in Indonesia. The baby was delivered by C-section, but it's still absolutely amazing to me. How does a baby GET that big in 9 months?? I'm concerned because I think Roger's going to be closer to the 9 pound mark. Add another 10 pounds to that and then I'd probably have more reason to cringe over the miracle of childbirth.

All the random facts on pregnancy can be found here. The most important one amongst all my whining and complaining is the one which states that only 10% of babies are born on their exact due date (mine being August 18). Based on these statistics, it sounds like a 2 week margin of error is king; I wish they'd say in which direction... even I could accurately predict that my baby will be born sometime between now and the beginning of September :D I do, however, have reason to believe that that two week margin for me might be closer to 38 weeks than 42. I think my bloody show made it's appearance yesterday. What? You THINK? Don't you KNOW? Well, I know that I'm spotting - that much is obvious to me - but whether it's because we're about to get this "show" on the road (har har - I couldn't resist the pun) or due to my exam yesterday is tough to say. What I do know: cramping started yesterday, along with some nausea (both of which seem to be mostly gone today though). Doc puts me at nearly 2 cm dilation, and when I left the office yesterday she said, "See you next week... or maybe sooner..." (though she probably says that to ALL her patients who've passed the full term mark and started dilating).

There is, however, no denying that I'm spotting and that it's right in line with the description of what a bloody show should be. I've obviously told my husband (who came home yesterday to me packing a bag and doing laundry. It was our 4 year wedding anniversary and I thought it might be funny to tell him I'm leaving, but he doesn't always share my sense of humor and with my big ol' basketball of a belly protruding about a foot and a half in front of me there are only so many reasons I would be packing). Apart from telling Matt, it's tough not to go shouting it from the rooftops. I want to shoot off emails to family letting them know I have reason to believe that labor could start any day now. I want to call my mom and Matt's mom to put them on the alert. I want to hang a sign from our front yard announcing that I got my bloody show (though that might be a bit TMI for our neighbors). The point is, I want SO bad for it to be the "real thing." I'm so ready for my squirmy little consolation prize that comes at the end of pregnancy that I'm vehemently praying that blood vessels in my cervix are rupturing (not every day you hear that sentence...). I'm trying to be realistic though. Since I DID just have an exam yesterday (which HURT - how freaking far up there IS my cervix??) it seems possible and likely that it could be the cause of my little bit of bleeding. So I continue to wait for the more obvious tell tale signs. Like contractions. Then I'll go shouting from the rooftops. After 37 weeks pregnancy truly becomes a game of hurry up and wait.