the countdown begins

Our magical transformation from family of three to family of four is looming - three weeks and two days until my due date, which means that he could come pretty much at any time, or not until the 20th of August.

The woman who taught our childbirth prep class when we were expecting the Monkey was trying to explain to the partners in the class how mentally and emotionally trying this particular part of pregnancy could be for those of us in the full-uterus set. She likened it to knowing that at some point in the very near future, you were going to break your arm. You wouldn't know when or how it would happen, but you could be certain that it would hurt, and that the circumstances surrounding it could be very public and embarrassing. That particular analogy has stuck with me all this time, and as I reach the point where it applies to me again, it just keeps popping back into my mind.

I find myself thinking tangentially most of the time, and I can't say that it's not weird or gross. [1]. Mostly though, I find myself contingency planning just in case my water breaks .... now. Or now. Or now. Who to call, how to get home in soggy pants - and then I wonder if that's what you do if you're planning a home birth - do you just go home, all drippy and stinky? Walk? Take the bus? Call a cab? Call Andrew and then sit for an hour, wafting Eau d'Amniotic Fluid and waiting for him to come from work to pick me up? (I didn't have to deal with this with the Monkey - my midwife had to break my water for me. Had I known, I would have seen about a dozen movies in the theatre in that last couple of weeks, but I was paralyzed at the thought of having my water break in public.[2])

Anyway. Other than the rapidly-mounting anxiety, the vicious heartburn that just won't go away, my fears over how our family dynamic will change and how the Monkey will react to her little brother when he's more than just an abstract idea, the mood swings, my almost complete lack of preparedness, the searing pain as the Stowaway stabs me directly in the cervix with his tiny knitting needle fingers and my inability to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time, I'm doing really well. I spent part of last night sorting tiny little clothes, and marvelling at their size, and at the fact that there's a little person in my belly who will fit into them, and into our family. I'm excited. And nervous. And excited. And hungry. But mostly excited.

[1] Things that have crossed my mind, in no particular order:
- can your water break before you lose your mucous plug?
- does the Shoppers in my neighbourhood carry plastic sheets, so I don't have to layer my bed with IKEA shower curtains that crinkle irritatingly every time I roll over in the night? I really like my feather bed.
- would live-blogging labour be too gross? Would it be more entertaining than old CSI reruns or playing Ratchet & Clank?
- are the pushing parts of labour that much worse than the contraction parts if you don't have an epidural to make everything all shiny and wonderful and to help you forget that a strange man is pulling a baby out of your body with an enormous pair of tweezers?
- how many times will the midwife let me vomit before we go to the hospital? And do I have a pail somewhere for that?
- will she take one look at my slap-dash attempts at housekeeping and declare our apartment too germ-ridden for a home birth?

[2] Other things that are different this pregnancy:
- I ate bacon and sandwich meat and didn't feel bad about it
- I haven't yet accidentally eaten a liqueur-filled chocolate and then spent the next three months convinced that my baby would have FAS and it would be all my fault.
- I painted my fingernails twice and did feel a smidge guilty. Nail polish has formaldehyde in it that can cross into your blood stream and kill your baby!
- this baby is STILL moving around like a bull in a china shop - the Monkey was much too big to move by this point.
- I thought I was under-slept then. I think about that now and laugh and laugh.
- I've been ready for it to be over for at least a month now. I remember being content with it right up until week 41 with the Monkey.
- I haven't stayed at a hotel at the same time as a convention for parents of blind and deaf children, and therefore have only had moderately crippling anxiety about this baby being born with either of those problems.
- my "nesting instinct" is less about making everything pretty and more about making everything relatively clean, where relatively means that you probably still want to keep your shoes on, just in case.