Something always takes the place of missing pieces

Please, this has to be the hormones.

I am a bundle of emotions right now. Waves of nostalgia wash over me, again and again and again—not unlike the way labor contractions build and hit you again and again and again. It really is happening with such a natural rhythm, such a familiar rhythm, I can only hope that is the some hormonal surge prior to labor.

Which is a bridge yet to be crossed at this point—labor.

I went to the mw yesterday. I’m negative for strep B, my bladder infection of the past 4 months is being held at bay by the daily dose of antibiotics.

My cervix is 100% effaced (i.e., thinned out) and I was dilated around 1. I can, of course, walk around like this for another 2 weeks and no labor. But the mw was surprised by how low his head is. She asked me if I felt his head, and I said, “I thought that was what it was!” (Note, I’m not actually touching his head—he’s still in his nice little bubble. But it doesn’t take much to press your hand on my pelvis and feel this small little round bump.)

Because he’s so far down in my pelvis, I am actually measuring smaller and smaller as the weeks go on, which is kind of funny.

I reported all this to A. He response was one of concern for the baby. Is he okay? Can he move around? Does it hurt him when I sit down?

I cannot think this is cute. It’s just irritating. It’s willful ignorance—he chose to stay uninformed. Maybe I’m just overly curious because this is happening to my body, but I do like to try and know as much as I can. I really do. And with A, I’m tired of being patient and understanding. I couldn’t even say “I’m 100% effaced” because I knew he would have no idea what it meant. Hell, when I did explain my cervix was thinned as much as it should be, he asked me if that was bad, was I on my way to the hospital.

All this because he couldn’t pick up a single book over the past 9 months. How hellish will the months after E be, when I not only know what’s what in baby care because I’ve re-read the books but also done it before. I’ve gotta break out my Stoic manual and just keep it by my side.
“There are some things you can control and some things you cannot.”

Maybe I’ll write the ancient Greek on some paper and post it on the fridge, in the shower, all over the place…just to remind me to let it go.

I do not think I need to say how much his lack of prepartation is aggrevating me right now.

While I have taken care of myself,

He
Still
Smokes
Tobacco.

Because of his failure to educate himself, I end up explaining a most things pregnancy related to him. His one source of pregnancy info is webMD. REALLY?

Okay, understand my disbelief of WedMD: If I type my migraine symptoms into webMD, I'm told to go to a hospital because I'm having a stroke. I tend to show atypical symptoms of typical problems, so this actually became a game I played with my friends in college. Whit, what are you symptoms of allergies?

You type in *double-vision *swelling *and the usual congestion, etc...and webMD declares I have a non-operative brain tumor and should consult a doctor ASAP.

So yeah, I distrust WebMD. And again, using WebMD as a source of information of pregnancy when there's ACOG and other more pregnancy-related, not disease-related, sites...?

So I end up explaining things to him. And at 39 weeks, I have come to resent this, because I end up feeling like I’m being interrogated. I’m an untrustworthy source. (WHY did you marry me if you can’t trust me to explain what’s ahppening to my own body?) I mean, I do have biases and I do not deny my biases. I don’t like how, in mainstream medical circles in the USA, every pregnancy tends to be treated like a disease that needs constant monitoring and attention instead of a natural part of a woman’s life cycle. I don’t like that I have to fight as hard as I have to in order to receive a simple, sense-making way of taking care of myself, our baby, etc. I have explained all this to A, but he seems to have that damn weak spot so many are prone to: appeal to authority. “If the doctor says this, then it must be true.”

Let’s all remember that the last time I accepted a doctor’s advice, feeling uncomfortable but declining to his authority, I ended up pregnant and having an abortion a month later. My sense that the birth control I was on wasn’t working wasn’t enough to switch it. It’s a hard way to learn that it’s really okay to ask a few more questions and be vocal about your concerns.

So A seems skeptical when I tell him ways to naturally help bring labor on—eating pineapple, nipple stimulation, sex (proglastins in the semen or something like that—works to get the baby in, works to get the baby out), and going for walks. He looks at me like I’m crazy, but most particularly that last one—the going for walks part. (which, out of all of them, is the most obvious one to me., but then again, I’m the one with the baby in her hips right now.)
I hate how American society treats pregnancy as more of “how is the mom doing harm to the baby” instead of seeing that:

Wow, mom, you’ve thrown up nearly every day of the first 18 weeks and then from 34 weeks on?

Wow, mom, you’re carrying 50% more weight around, are you tired, is that hard? Is it annoying when people YOU DO NOT KNOW (there’s a vast difference between a stranger and say, the amazing friends I’ve encountered this week) comment on how big you are?

Okay…so there’s a nice, hormonally-driven rant about A’s lack of preparation for fatherhood. I do not feel any bit close to sympathetic for him right now. I did, I have. I don’t now. I’m pretty sure he’s channeling much of his anxiety into concern over his store because he just comes home and goes on and on and on about that. I am just barely tolerating it.

I feel so ugly, inside and out. I really, really, need this baby to be born. I keep trying to be positive today, and it’s just not working.

There is so much more I want to say. I can’t. I don’t know how.

Off to cry some more now…this is all temporary and things will change soon, right?