Yo, Mamas

No, I have still not had this baby. I'm still having contractions, sometimes painful ones, but they're still irregular. I'm not going to prattle on about how frustrating this is, because you've heard it from me already.

What I am going to say is this: THANK YOU. For helping to keep me sane. Because, for seriously? I might have already gone well 'round the crazy bend by now if I didn't have this amazing community surrounding me and supporting me and helping me navigate the craziness that is this pregnancy and life, generally.

I wrote you all an OMG Thank You So Much And By The Way Happy Mothers Day card (early, because, well, if the gods are smiling upon I will be busy giving birth by Mothers Day). It's here. I meant every word of it.

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I'm still working on visiting and thanking you all individually for those beautiful, beautiful shower posts, but it's slow going because everything I'm doing these keeps getting interrupted by painful and mind-messing early labor bizniss. I'll get to your post, I promise. I'm so thankful for all of them. They've been making me laugh and cry and the emotional release has been so welcome.

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My blog updates might get more sporadic from here on out. It's tiring and tiresome - to me - to keep writing about NOT having this baby yet, so hard, so frustrating, early labor wtf, bitch bitch bitch. And if I am fortunate to get this baby out soon, I'll be going quiet for a few days (although the news WILL get posted.) Or maybe not. Maybe I'll just keep on bitching, daring the gods to NOT let this child pass. Because The Amazing Thirteen Month Pregnant Bitch-Woman (writing about her 5+ months of labor) might just make for a good alternate blog identity.

Camels take thirteen-plus months to gestate. Am not camel. YOU HEAR THAT, GODS???

Hysterical

Hysteric - from the Greek, hysterikos - of or from the womb (uterus: hystera); suffering caused by the womb.

Yesterday, I went to the hospital. I wasn't convinced that I was in full-on regular labor, but something was up, and I was concerned enough about what was going on - over two days of very painful, if irregular, contractions, and reduced fetal movement, and this after a full week of less intense 'false' labor - that I called my doctor and asked what I should do. The nurse on duty said, predictably, go into triage, better safe than sorry, this could be labor, it could something else, in any case we want to make sure that you and the baby are okay.

She also said, bring your hospital bag, just in case. Not having packed a hospital bag - because, you know, packing hospital bags just jinxes any possibility of a baby coming in a timely manner, yanno? - I gathered up my phone and camera and laptop, shoved a clean pair of underpants in my coat pocket and commanded my husband to drive.

The nurses at triage were wonderful, sympathetic, gentle women who said all the right things about me coming in and getting checked out and felt my belly gently as it contracted and contracted again and then hooked me up to all of those monitors and things and cooed soothingly as the heart monitor registered a healthy heartbeat etc, etc. Your contractions are registering as mild, they said, but of course that doesn't mean that they're not painful. Coo, coo, cluck, cluck, everything looks good, dear.

My doctor wasn't in or on-call, so they called in a resident to examine me further. The resident did not coo or cluck. The resident sat down in a chair next to the hospital bed and looked me up and down. I've looked at the fetal cardiogram blah blah blah, she said. Everything looks fine, and you seem to be in very early labor. She paused again. But it *is* early. Why did you come in?

(Momentary stunned silence)

'Um, because of the pain? The pain has been bad. Off and on, for days now. DAYS. Since early last week or so. And the baby wasn't moving so much. So I called, AND THE NURSE TOLD TO ME TO.'

That can happen; it can go on for weeks; it can be painful, yes, but it's perfectly normal. Your uterus is just getting ready for the birth blah blah blah.

'I know, I know, but my doctor told me to come in straight away if the pains got worse. They got worse. And the baby, not moving, and I called the nurse and she said...'

Of course, of course, you did the right thing (fake cooing)

She pauses again, and flips through my file.

I see here that you're a patient in the Reproductive Life Stages* program here at the hospital... *(RLS = Crazy Pregnant and Post-Partum Ladies Psychiatric Care Club, membership by referral only.)

'YES WHY?' (hysteria rising in voice)

Just asking. You've been feeling okay? Managing your anxiety? Have you spoken to them recently?

(Is she calling me crazy oh my effing god? IS SHE CALLING ME CRAZY FOR COMING IN HERE?)

'A few weeks ago WHY?'

Just want to make sure that you're not too anxious about this pregnancy.

'I am anxious right now because I am in PAIN.'

I know, I know (fake clucking, jotting of notes that I KNOW say something to the effect of batshit loco.)

She pauses again. So, she says after a moment. What are we going to do with you?

*HEAD EXPLODES*

I left, after numerous sympathetic back pats from triage nurses who cooed kind things about not hesitating to come in again if the pains worried me, and promptly burst into tears. When I got home, there was a message on the phone from Reproductive Life Stages, 'checking in' on me: was I okay? did I need an appointment? At which point I might have burst into tears again, if I hadn't needed to double over just right that minute to cope with yet another pain.

I'll talk to my doctor about it, and she will, I know, shake her head vigorously and insist that I was absolutely right to come in, and that I must not hesitate to do so again, and that I should pay no mind to any real or perceived suggestion that my experience with this interminable false/early/whatever labor is anything but legitimately frustrating and worrying and that, again, again I must not hesitate to call or come in at any time if I'm in any way concerned.

But the damage has been done. If I wasn't a basket-case before, I'm well on my way to being one now. If this baby doesn't begin his emergence in some sort of very obvious, textbook way, I'm going to be reluctant to call again, ever.

Which means that this baby just might get born in our bathroom. In which case, those clean underpants in my coat pocket really will be a useless precaution.

(For the Countdown To Baby record, the contractions subsided in the night - so I got to sleep for a few hours for the first time in DAYS - but are back again and are hurting and would be it be wrong for me to hit the liquor, like, now?)

If This Is It, Please Let Me Know

UPDATE: No baby yet. Have been to hospital and they say that I am in 'early' labor and that it could go on for days and oh, hai, yeah, sometimes it hurts like a bitch but it's just that way sometimes. Will update on that hospital visit - which made me, much to my embarassment, cry - later, after I have drunk my castor-oil martinis.

You all are getting sick to the death of the subject of my pregnancy, I know, and I apologize. Believe me, if I could summon the will to discourse intelligently upon any other topic, I would do so. Because, yes - as I keep saying over and over again - I am well and truly sick to the death of it myself.

I've been having crazy false labor for about the past 16 hours now. It's not regular labor, because, well, it's irregular, but it's more painful than past episodes, and this morning it's involving actual back pain and shit and although I know that this can go on for weeks, it feels different enough that I think something might be up. Which means, of course - because I have gone and written those words down and therefore invited the gods to bitch-slap me hard - that it's all probably all going to amount to nothing. But still: I get to sit here and feel my insides cramp up and wonder, for the umpteenth time, is this it? while contemplating the pros and cons of either continuing suffer through an interminable labor (because, false or not, this feels like labor, and so it is, to my mind, labor, and someday this kid is going to hear all about how mommy was in labor with you for weeks and don't you forget it) OR finally getting to a point where this kid might decide to get his massive self out of there.

For the record: the 'pros' of this continuing to be false labor involve the fact that so long as the labor is false, I do not have to get up off my lazy ass and do anything about it, like, say, pushing a giant kid out of my nether regions. The pros of this being true labor, obviously, involve the fact that I CAN HAS GIANT FETUS OUT OF MAH UTURUS kthxbye?

This is me, this morning, at 37 and a half weeks pregnant:


I am massive. My back hurts. My belly hurts. And it just keeps contracting and uncontracting and messing with my head omfg and I wish that I knew whether this time, it really is time.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go double over in pain and pray for respite.

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Everybody who participated in the shower this weekend? Thank you all beyond much, really. I'm trying to get around to all the posts to thank you personally - I've made it to about half of them so far, I think - but I'm being slowed by this may-or-may-not-be-labor thing. I promise that I'll get there eventually. In the meantime, big love to you all. (And also to everybody who talked me down from my panic about C-section nazis terrorizing me with their calls of doom and gory videos. Thanks for hearing me out, and for, as always, saying just the right soothing things in low tones and telling me to just go ahead, get it out, be angry. I love you for that.)