I've been having mildly uncomfortable contractions for about 12 hours now. Nothing I couldn't sleep through, or talk through, or write a weblog entry through, so we haven't timed them (except for the first few) and we're treating today like a normal day -- Marc's at work, Mom's watching TV and racing through another book, and I'm about to have some cereal and sit on the couch for a few hours.
I'm mostly saying this because I know you're all watching to see what happens, and even I'm getting sick of the lack of progress. Also, if I should happen to give birth tomorrow, I want to have firmly established ahead of time that the declaration will not be an April Fools' Day joke. It will, however, be all Marc's fault, since he's the one who really wanted an April baby.
Carolyn has a better story:
Let me tell you about what it's like ordering a grilled cheese sandwich at the bowling alley.
When I was in a league, and on a team with 4 other meat-loving men (literally, not figuratively or metaphorically), they used to tease me because pretty much the only thing I could really get on the menu, as a non-militant vegetarian, was a grilled cheese sandwich. One Wednesday, during play, I bit into my sandwich to find out it had a slice of ham in it. They had made me a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. This was annoying, but it helped me to prove an entirely separate point - for the past month, I had been having trouble at Dunkin' Donuts, where they had a 50% rate of error with my Egg and Cheese on a Bagel Sandwich. 50% of the time, I'd get back to the office, and there'd be some kind of meat on it, either ham, bacon, or sausage. Apparently, Egg & Cheese (without any meat), though it is on the menu at Dunkin Donuts, was rarely ordered without meat. Included in the 50% of the time they actaully got it correct were the times they stopped in the middle of assembling the sandwich to shout, "What kind of meat did you want on this? Was it ham?" The last time I went there (for a long time), I got back to the office and had 3 huge pieces of ham on my sandwich, 2 more than the standard allotted amount. The guys and I figured that the sandwich-maker must have gotten back to the counter, started to make my sandwich, and was too embarrassed that he'd "forgotten" what kind of meat I wanted, so he just put 3 huge pieces on and figured I'd be happy because I got a lot of meat, even if it was the wrong kind. To support this, Doug from work pointed out that if he had order Bacon-Egg-and-Cheese and instead got 3-huge-pieces-of-ham-egg-and-cheese, he'd be psyched.
So back to the bowling alley - I had just sworn of Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, and now, suddenly, it was happening to me at the bowling alley, which had been safely providing me with meat-free grilled cheese sandwiches for over a year. The next week, I went up to the counter to order my grilled cheese, and was prepared to watch them assemble the sandwich before it went on the grill to be sure. I was not prepared for this conversation:
Me: Could I get a grilled cheese sandwich?
Her: Sorry - we're out of grilled cheese sandwiches.
(? - I see cheese burgers lined up by the grill)
Me: You're out of cheese?
Her: No, we're out of ham.
Me: Oh, well I just want a grilled cheese sandwich.
Her: Without any ham? (she is alarmed)
Me: Yes - no ham.
Her: Ooooo-kayy.
About 30 minutes later, my teammates gesture to the snack bar white board, where the woman had written this announcement shortly after giving me my meal.
"No grilled cheese sandwiches today.
We're out of ham."
-Carolyn
There's a pretty interesting thread over at Ask Metafilter regarding how to order normal coffee. I'm personally looking forward to trying out "roomy joe," which the thread claims is accepted in Central NJ, although I've never heard it before.
I've always been troubled by "regular coffee" vs. "coffee regular." Sometimes they mean coffee with milk and sugar. In Connecticut, either one means "not decaf," no additions specified. However, I had this exchange regularly at a particular deli in NYC...
me: small coffee, regular.
them: sugar?
Don't get me started on the venti grande dobo crap.
On the other hand, I could easily eat a half-dozen Dunkin Donuts right now without a second thought.
Thanks to the proliferation of comment spam, I've decided to stop including comments unless I decide they would really add to a post I've made. I'm sorry if this takes away from your experience at the know. Marc tried really hard to make it so that I could still have comments, and I think he succeeded, but I'm going to hold off on most posts anyway for a while. You can always use mail if you have something to say, even if it is just to try to convince me to turn comments on for a particular entry.
In the meantime, blame the comment spammers.
... I am now 1, or maybe 2, centimeters dilated, and 50% effaced. Neither of these is any great progress, but it's better than last Monday's appointment, when the midwife said, "Boy, that baby sure is happy in there..." So while I'm not exactly putting stamps on the birth announcements yet, at least the presence of a baby head in the vicinity of my cervix has been confirmed. ("Houston, we have a cranium...")
We also passed the first (and hopefully only, since I'm now LATE) "non-stress" test, which is just the sort of combination of positives and negatives that I haven't been able to parse since going to Japan. I'm pretty sure that "passing" was "good". I do know for sure that my blood pressure is 115 over 56, which is pretty close to dead for a woman with a past-due fetus in her abdomen, but still considered "good". "Good" and "less good" are the words that medical professionals use when they want to make you feel informed but not so knowledgeable that you will attempt to self-diagnose. Incidentally, "late" is a word that medical professionals use when they want to make you feel gigantic.
About 10 minutes into the test, an alarm sounded because the baby's heart rate had been below 120 for a few seconds, and the alarm continued to sound for the next 15 minutes or so while my mother and I stared at each other with wide eyes, wondering if I'd a) failed, or b) busted the equipment. Needless to say, after a few seconds of NEEEE-NERRRRR-NEEEE-NERRRRR, the baby's heart rate had pretty well recovered, to the point where the child may never sleep again. Luckily, they did not take my blood pressure again after this part of the test.
In other news, I just shook the 96 oz. juice bottle with the cap only partially in place. Hallelujah, it's raining OJ.
Still no baby.
Last night I had a dream, though, that made me think today could be the day. I was lying in bed after my third or fourth pee of the night, thinking of relatives of ours who have died, and trying to think of the trait I most hoped for the baby to inherit from each of them. When I drifted off to sleep, I started dreaming about all of the people I'd just been imagining, plus some others I couldn't recognize, who were standing around a foggy hole about ten feet in diameter. They were passing around a bundle clearly representative of a baby, each sort of physically gesturing about the baby and reluctantly handing it on. My grandmother (my mother's mother) was first, and was obviously in charge, encouraging the others to follow suit. The last was Marc's grandfather (his mother's father), who was the most reluctant. I watched him hold the baby for a long time before he buried his face in the blanket and sort of cast the baby away in a swooping toss, toward the hole.
I've been hoping to dream about the baby for months, after reading an account of someone's child coming to them in a dream to declare the name they wanted, and I've had plenty of dreams that were baby-related, but they mostly involved parental incompetence on my part. This was the first time I woke up and thought, well now, that had some weight to it.
When I told Marc about the dream, he reminded me that yesterday was the two-year anniversary of his grandfather's death.
So, our dead relatives have apparently given their blessing, which leaves what? Nothing, I hope. Bring on the baby!
Still no baby. For anyone keeping score, I'm t-minus seven days to my due date, which means I could go as long as another three weeks without medical intervention.
That said, I feel pretty damned pregnant.
We are (gulp) ready. My mom's in town, watching me like a pot, expecting me to blow as soon as she's left alone in a room with me. Marc's ready for a couple of weeks off of work, during which time he's got enormous plans that will probably amount to wishing he could sleep more and lots of poop talk. We even printed out a hospital information sheet for everyone with directions and phone numbers and visiting policies. I'm half-packed, and with one foot out the door, I think that's as good as I could have hoped for.
All we need is the stinkin' baby! Or at least a contraction or two, for crying out loud.
We saw another ultrasound the other day, complete with big head, chubby cheeks, absurdly long baby legs and big feet... the baby version of Marc's face on my body?
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