Between A Rock And A Hard Place

Being overdue is very interesting.  Every second of every day I know that I could go into labour.  Every little ping and pang in my body causes me to stop and wonder if the time has finally come.  I did go into labour by myself with our first little one but everyone keeps telling me that every labour is different.  I sure hope they are right cause my first labour was horrible!  When it started I had not slept in over 24 hours, then the labour took 20 hours, the epidural did not work, and it took 2.5 hours to push that little girl out in the middle of the night.  This time around, I am hoping to go into labour after a good nights sleep, have the epidural take away all my pain, and push this baby out in 30 minutes or less.  Ok, perhaps my expectations are a bit unrealistic but I need that dream to keep me from having a panic attack.

Yesterday I was pretty exhausted.  I have not been sleeping well and the bigger this baby gets, the worse the acid reflux becomes.  Yesterday the reflux was so bad that I felt like throwing up all day long.  By the time 5:00pm rolled around, I was done.  My wonderful husband stepped in for me and got our kid fed, bathed and into bed while I layed down on the couch feeling sorry for myself.  During the evening I had a startling revelation...... either I keeping being pregnant and become more and more uncomfortable or I go into painful labour.  Talk about a rock and a hard place!  The worst part of it is that I HAVE NO CONTROL over it.  Grrrrrrrrrr, I hate having no control.  I am a control monster.  I must have my house clean and organized at all times or I get very grumpy.  Poor Mr. Wonderful (aka my husband) cannot leave anything laying around without me attacking him.  Labour makes me so anxious because I cannot dictate exactly how it will go.  It seems a little unfair.  If I have to go through something that painful, shouldn't I get some say in how it will go?  Hmmmm,  perhaps this is one of those things that I just have to leave in God's hands.  One of the biggest curses of being a control freak is that giving God control is REALLY hard.  Could going into labour be a teachable moment between God and I?  Hmmmmm, there's a perspective that I haven't had before.......

Still Waiting..... But That's OK

I am officially two days overdue.  People keep trying to encourage me by saying that the baby will be here before I know it and to just hang in there.  I really do appreciate their encouragement especially because most of those women have been in my position before.  However, I am experiencing an interesting phenomenon..... I don't mind waiting.  Maybe I figured that since Lillian was late it was inevitable that this one would be too or maybe I'm afraid of labour, maybe I selfishly love my sleep, or maybe I just so desperately want Dean here for the delivery that I am more than willing to wait as long as possible to have this baby.  Whatever the reason, I am perfectly content to continue waiting.  Feeling this way sure makes the waiting easy.  So, if you see me in the next few days don't feel sorry for me, because I am perfectly fine.

On the other hand, poor Lillian would really like to meet her new brother or sister.  She asks me regularly if we can go to the doctor and get the baby out of mommy's tummy.  She is also very much looking forward to having a sleepover at Grandma's house and getting to have a bath in Grandma's big bathtub.  She is also very excited that when the baby comes Daddy does not have to go to work for a long time because he's going to stay home with us (thank you Paternity Leave!).  She is probably getting pretty sick of waiting for this baby that she's been hearing about for so long.  On the plus side, she's associating the new baby coming with all kinds of positive things which might help with sibbling rivalry..... at least for a week or so ;)

I don't really have much more to say.  Life feels like it is going in slow motion right now, but that is a feeling that comes very rarely in life so I've decided to embrace and enjoy it.... at least for another day or so.

Waiting

I very clearly remember waiting for Lillian to finally arrive.  For some reason I had the idea in my head that she was going to be two weeks early.  I decided to start my maternity leave two and a half weeks before my due date.  I got the baby room all ready, all the clothes washed, bags packed and freezer stocked with meals.  Well, two weeks before my due date arrived and no baby came.  The next week arrived and still no baby.  Then along came my due date and, yep you guessed it, still no baby.  By this time I had come obsessed with washing my floors.  I vacumed and mopped my floors at least once a day.  I was determined to come home from the hospital to a house with clean floors.  Yep, obsessed is definately the word to use.


The waiting probably would not have been too bad if four people who were due after me did not have their babies before me.  Every time I heard about someone having their baby, anger would begin to rise up in me.  Poor Dean was the very gracious recipient of this rage.  I specifically remember an evening nine days after my due date.  Dean and I rented "Baby Mama"..... Note: don't rent movies about people having babies when you are overdue.  Halfway through the movie I got a phone call from a very good friend of mine who's baby was due two weeks after mine.  As soon as I heard her voice I could feel that rage begin to bubble up.  Yep, she was calling to tell me that she had just delivered a baby girl.  SERIOUSLY!!!!!  At that moment I felt like my baby was a very mean spirited prankster who was out to make me as miserable as possible.  I somehow found it in me to, very nicely, ask how her labour went and then even sound excited for her.  Of course I was very happy for her but my self pitty overtook that feeling.  I hung up the phone, unpaused the movie, and started to bawl.  My poor husband did not know what had taken over his wife and I'm sure he began to pray very hard that God would take away this crazy lady in his family room and bring back his wife.  I can honestly say that in that very moment, I was convinced I would be pregnant forever!  Well, obviously I was not perma-pregnant.  Lillian decided to arrive four days after that with her little lungs ready to scream for the next four months.  About two days after she was born I wished she had stayed inside me just a little bit longer.  Yes, I am fickle. 


With baby number two I decided early on that I was going to brace myself for this baby to be late.  I was determined to be mentally prepared.  However, when I hit the 7 1/2 month mark my determination was beginning to disappear and I found myself hoping that this baby might come just a little bit early.  Then, when I was a little less then three weeks away from my due date I got a phone call from a friend who was due a week after me.  Yep, you guessed it, she had her baby 4 weeks early.  I don't know what happened inside me, but the rage that I would have expected turned into pure dread.  All of a sudden the memories of a very long labour (with an epidural that didn't take) and a screaming colicky baby came flooding over me.  I was relieved that it was her who had her baby and not me. 


So now I am one day away from my due date and I am in absolutely no rush to get this baby out.  I know that life is going to change when this baby arrives.  I know that instead of having a kid, I will have kids.  I know that sleeping through the night will be non-existent for a while.  Don't misunderstand me, I also know that this baby is going to be an amazing blessing that we are going to love and cherish forever and I am very excited to meet him or her.  I simply feel that I could wait another week for that meeting.  This may also stem from the fact that my husband is a truck driver and is often out of town and I spend about half the nights of the week telling this baby to wait until Daddy gets home.  I do have a backup plan if Dean is out of town and I thought I would be alright if he wasn't here, afterall I've known for months that chances of him being there were about 50/50.  But as the day draws near I realize that, as much as I love my backup people, I want to share the moment with Dean.  Seeing Lillian for the first time was the single greatest moment of our marriage.  All of a sudden we were not just two people, we were a family.  The instant we saw her we were both in love with not only her, but eachother.  I will never forget the moment Dean held Lillian for the first time.  I have never ever seen him so in awe.  I don't want that moment to come hours after this baby is born, I want that moment as soon as the baby is born.  Maybe that's just pure selfishness but as a mother who spends my life being unselfish and putting my kids first, I feel like maybe I deserve that moment.

Change

I thought I would start a blog for two reasons.  One, I think it may be somewhat theraputic to be able to put my thoughts out there instead of just bottling them inside.  Two, I hope that perhaps I might be able to help other moms realize that what they are going through and what they are feeling is normal (now this is assuming that I am a "normal" person).

When Dean and I decided to have a second child it seemed like a great idea.  Lillian was almost two and we thought that giving her a brother or sister would be a great addition to her life as well as ours.  Both Dean and I have sibblings so having more than one child seemed like the natual thing to do.  Well, as the months passed we began to get more and more excited about our new additon to the family but it still seemed like his or her arrival was a long ways away.  I decided to get everything ready a month in advance of my due date so that I could spend the last month of my pregnancy hanging out with Lillian and giving her a fun last month of being an only child.  To be honest, part of my heart breaks when I think about Lillian becoming a big sister.  Don't get me wrong, I think it's going to be great for her, but she was my very first baby.  She still seems so small and I just want to hold her like a baby, sit in the rocking chair, and somehow slow down time.  But, she is no longer a baby, she's a big sister.  She will, of course, always be MY baby, no matter how old she is or how many babies come into our family.  When I look at her I think of a tough pregnancy with several scary moments, I think of a long labour and hours spent pacing the nursery in the middle of the night with her screaming in my arms.  I also think about holding her for the first time, I think about how she smelled, how she felt and how she was ours.  A perfect combination of Dean and I. 

I know that the moment I meet our new baby I will be as much in love with him or her as I am with Lillian but, it's hard to imagine.  Lillian has changed me.  She has made me learn to love in a completely different way then I ever had before.  She has made me learn to appreciate Dean and how much he loves us.  She has brought so many smiles, so many moments of awe, and so much joy.  I will never love any word as much as I love hearing her say "Mommy".

So, this new baby has a lot to live up to but somehow I think he or she will captivate my heart just as quickly and effortlessly as Lillian did.