41 weeks, 2 days and counting…
The little guy inside me is being quite stubborn about wanting to come out and meet us in the big, bright world. I never thought that I would be later with #3 than with #2, but that’s exactly what has happened. I’m nine days overdue as of today, and I was only four days late with Erik. The end is definitely in sight no matter what — I had a midwife appointment this morning and they will induce labor by sometime on Friday if my body can’t get things going by that time. I would be 42 weeks along on Sunday, and it’s rare for doctors or midwives to allow women to go past 42 weeks these days (and of course inductions aren’t scheduled for the weekend!).
If I make it to tomorrow morning without going into labor I’ll also be having an ultrasound tomorrow to check on the fluid levels around the baby and in general how the baby is doing. I thought it was kind of funny that I will have the ultrasound less than 48 hours before either going into labor naturally or being induced regardless of the results…but I guess that information is important to them regardless of how things proceed from there.
I feel very fortunate to not be terribly physically uncomfortable despite the pregnancy lasting as long as it has. Of course I have been having some contractions here and there, but in general I haven’t been feeling too awful. The psychological stress of continually not being able to make plans is probably worse for me. For the past two or three weeks, I have been nervous to leave the house alone with the kids for fear of going into labor while out and about (my labor was very fast with Erik, so I potentially might not have much warning between the time when I knew labor was really going and the time when the contractions would be so bad that I wouldn’t be able to drive!). Madeline likes to plan ahead as much as I do, and every day she asks me not, “what are we going to do today?” but, “what are we going to do tomorrow?”! It has been getting old to tell her every day, “I don’t know what we are doing tomorrow — it depends on how I’m feeling and if the baby comes or not.”
Until maybe the past couple of days, these last few weeks of pregnancy really did go by quite quickly. I spent a fair amount of time in early January working on my editing for the Spring issue of the Faithwalkers devotional (formerly Daylights), and then once that was done I tackled a ton of projects to get ready for baby’s arrival — everything from reorganizing and sorting the kids’ toys to pre-washing and organizing the cloth diapers for the new baby to getting stocked up on groceries. The projects were pretty much done by about a week ago, so the kids and I have enjoyed lots of time to play while we waited around to see when baby would show up.
Tony is home with us now starting this week, and will be home until at least February 16th. We’re trying to make the best of waiting for baby and enjoying the time we have to spend as just the four of us. When Tony returns to work sometime around the 16th, he will actually be heading to a different job. He was offered a three month contract position at a company in St. Paul doing work that relates more to the scientific computing side of his skills and experiences than to his experience in the field of Chemical Engineering. Assuming things go as planned, they would really like him to stay on as a permanent employee once the three months are up. But even if something were to happen and they couldn’t hire him full time after the contract position is over, he would be no worse off than if he would have stayed at his job at the University of Minnesota, since that job would have ended in May anyway.
So look for baby news to be coming soon…we’ll be a family of five by sometime Friday at the latest!