I realized yesterday, thanks to a handy iphone pregnancy app, that I am now 38 weeks pregnant. This came as a bit of a shock, because, of course, it means that technically I could have this baby at any time. Like, even tomorrow. TOMORROW.
(OK, yes. I admit it: I am kind of a bad mom for needing a pregnancy app to tell me how far along I am. With my two previous pregnancies I knew to the day where I was in my gestation. What can I say? I'm older this time around, and I have a 3-year-old and 5-year-old to keep track of. Not my fault. Well, mostly not my fault.)
So. The baby could come at any time. I should be worried, because we are not ready. AT ALL. I haven't retrieved our bassinet from my friend who has been using it, the crib mattress is currently on the floor ready to catch my 3-year-old the next time he falls out of his bed, and I haven't boiled the
nipples for any of our bottles. (And before you get snippy about the fact that this baby will probably be fed formula from early on in his/her life, read THIS.)
So, yeah, if the baby were born tomorrow, we'd have some scrambling to do.
However, I'm not worried. My oldest son came at 41 weeks, and my younger son took even longer than that to be fully cooked. Odds are we have three more weeks. PLENTY of time to get that infant car seat installed. LOTS of time to pick a name. SCADS of time to replace all the newborn clothes I gave away three years ago. No problem! And after all, this is my last pregnancy (for REALS this time) and I want to enjoy it for as long as I can.
On the other hand...I haven't been enjoying it quite so much this time.
While this pregnancy has been easy compared to some women's pregnancies, it's been a rough-ish few months for me. It started when I got shingles, which I really thought was an old person's disease. (It's not.) Then the baby was breech for a while and my dreams of a natural, probably-unmedicated birth were put on hold until he/she got with the program and turned around. Recently, I spent a week with a terrible cold, and just when it started to clear up...I got pink eye, which I really thought was a young person's disease. (It's not.)
I figured the worst was over until I experienced something I'd never heard of before: an ocular migraine. Basically, your vision gets all screwy for 30 minutes or so, and your kids get to watch extra tv while you panic and call Labor and Delivery because you're certain you have a tumor or a stroke or something. If you're lucky like me, you get a wonderful midwife on the phone who explains what's happening and as if by magic your vision returns to normal pretty much instantly. So. Much. Fun.
But, despite those discomforts, I'm pretty excited to meet our baby. I'm excited to start calling it "him" or "her" instead of "it." I'm excited to start learning his/her personality. (Though I just know already that he/she will be a good sleeper. I SAID, I KNOW IT.) I'm excited to see my 3-year-old become a big brother. I know there are sleepless nights and poop-soaked days ahead of me, but I'm ready. I still have doubts about how I will handle being a mom of three, but I figure we'll all muddle through it somehow. It won't be perfect, and at times it will probably be a big ole mess, but we'll figure it out.
So, given all that, I thought this month I'd revisit the blog post that started it all...
Dead Womb Walking?
I wrote it back before I got pregnant, when I was still trying to figure out if we should have a 3rd baby. Enjoy it!
