Bad Timing

"Now THIS is bad timing.", I muttered to myself as I walked out of my midwifes office at forty-ONE weeks pregnant.

Epic bad timing.

Earlier that morning my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and nephew had packed up their stuff and headed back to Indiana after staying for a week. To help with the new baby.

Except there WAS no new baby.

I mean, for most of my pregnancy I'd been in this limbo-like state of wondering if I were REALLY going to have another baby. It seemed a bit like a dream in some respects, so maybe it was all... In My Head.

"Psychosomatic. I'm sure of it. I'm never going to have this baby and I'm going to be pregnant FOREVER!", I said through clenched teeth as I wriggled myself into the much too small space between the seat and the steering wheel.

Since the day I stared down at the digital pregnancy test wondering whether it could possibly be telling the truth or not, I'd counted, calculated, and recounted the calendar days till D-Day. I'd known EXACTLY what calendar date the counting should begin, factored the average gestation of each of my previous children, took into account the varying cycle lengths, and used every online due date calendar available.

Not one of my previous children had varied from my calculations for more than a day.

Until now.

Now I was standing there at 41 weeks pregnant, relatives fleeing like june bugs from a duck, and my mom not scheduled to fly in for another week. (Really, I'm not blaming any of them, I'm so thankful for the help each one of them provided for the time they were here!)

All I could picture was the weekend flying by just like every other day of the last 3 weeks: with constant, timeable contractions that did nothing. Then I'd finally go into labor late Sunday night, have the baby in the wee hours, then have my husband go home, get the kids, and drop them off on his way to work.

With me.

AT THE HOSPITAL.

I had to figure out something, and quick.

So early Saturday morning we dropped the kids off with Grandpa J. and headed in to the hospital for a non-stress test, which is standard operating procedure for anyone a week or more past due. But we brought the hospital bag anyway, knowing the recommendation would be to stay and be induced.

My fluids were low. My midwife was on call. The hospital bed stood at the ready, with the big spa tub waiting.

I mean, it's not like I was terribly miserable. Not like with Emmy. I knew this wasn't a 9 lb. baby, though my midwife was worried anyway about having a previous 9 pounder at 40 weeks. I wasn't all 'PLEASE LORD let me DIE before going another day PREGNANT!!!' like that.

I could have gone another week.

But still. It was getting tedious.

Mostly the comments and questions were getting tedious.

How many more days would I have to hear things like:

* "How are you feeling today?" PREGNANT.

* "Aren't you having ANY contractions?" YES. Yes, I am. CONSTANTLY. But they just don't seem to want to intensify and get down to 3 min. apart so I can go to the HOSPITAL.

* "Can't you produce?" WELL, Obviously I CAN. Just not on cue, apparently.

* "Are you a horse?" Um, WHAT?!

Took me a while to figure that one out. Like, two days later when I realized that there had been a full moon on the night of that particular question... But yeah, at the time, I FELT like a whale and being CALLED a horse didn't help my state of mind.

So yeah, back at the hospital.

I stood there looking at my midwife and I made a decision I never thought I'd be faced with making: I chose to be induced.