Week 36: GO TIME

This morning my doctor informed me that if I go into labor in the next four weeks they will not attempt to stop the labor, it’ll be go time. And I was being foolish to fret over hard labor, undue stress on my uterus is exactly what they’re trying to avoid. But the baby is considered full term now. I am 9 months pregnant now. I’m here. I made it. It’s the beginning of the end….of this.

This is also the part of the pregnancy where everything went to hell the last time. I never get heart burn but I have it now, since my stomach has been slowly shoved into my throat. And I wonder how long I’m going to be able to wear shoes. I get so warm now, especially when I try and sleep, that my cheeks are almost constantly sporting sand dollar sized circles of pink. I gained five pounds of water in one week and STILL have not crested the 200 mark, but fast approaching. There’s other less than lovely stuff, but you get the idea.

Yet today I’m feeling pretty good. When the nurse had me lie down this morning to check for the baby’s heart rate said baby kept kicking her little hand held machine. This tickled the nurse to no end. I made some comment about how active the baby is and she said “I know it’s uncomfortable for you but it’s a good thing for us. It’s the ones that just piddle around in there that we worry about”.

And lastly, the other day my friend says “Niki, I just don’t think it’s a girl. I have this nagging suspicion”. People have asked me if I have a feeling about the gender one way or the other. No. Not this time. I initially thought it was a boy but had a dream about a baby girl….and have since had a dream about a baby boy that looked Chinese. So, no. I haven’t a single inkling that I trust anylonger. With Maddy I knew. When the technician announced to the room of family and friends that the baby was female I punctuated that with “I already told you this”. But this baby? The lady performing this baby’s ultrasound was 99.9999999 % sure of the sex. In fact this technician had a “feeling” it was male as well, so she continued to check and check and check to make certain. “No, that’s a girl…wait…...oh yeah, that is definitely a girl”.

But some sneaky whisperer in the back of my mind has said “well what if it’s wee-wee is just really, really small and they couldn’t see it”. Hmmmmm, the super small wee-wee theory, food for thought. All I’m saying is that I haven’t opened any of the pink stuff.