How to Go Insane in Just One Easy Step

I know that many check this thing daily for news and get antsy when I don't post.

I have nothing to report. My silence doesn't mean I'm at the hospital, it means nothing new has happened, and I'm on a slow non-stop train ride to Crazy Town.

For two weeks I laid in fear that any move I made would put me back into active labor and I'd have the baby too early. It was nerve-wracking. Too much anxiety. Too many "if this happens, come in"s, and a far-too-similar list of "don't bother coming in unless this happens".

Then the 37 week mark came and went. The goal I was told to try for. I was allowed to get up. I was allowed to let things happen. Every time I've seen a medical professional in the last few weeks I've been told, "any day now" and "I would be shocked if you made it a week."

After a while the lists of the Signs of Labor found in the books and on the websites became useless to me. At any given moment I'd be experiencing at least one, just waiting for another to occur, only to find that when it did the other would go away. I went from being afraid to deliver too early to being afraid this would go on forever. From being afraid to move lest it would spur the contractions on to being afraid to sit down lest the contractions slow down. I am in a state of constant anxiety. For weeks I have been staying at home, or close to home, because I am so dilated that if things start to pick up I'm at risk of a home birth (true story from the midwife, not me being dramatic). I'm so exhausted from my body working so hard that part of me doesn't want to do anything at all. But I've also not been doing anything at all for so long that part of me wants to get the heck out of here and just get crazy. Then as I'm getting dressed to go do something fun I get tired just from that and have to take a 30 minute break just to be able to color with my kid. I feel like I'm slowly losing my mind.

It's not even that I'm so anxious to be done with my pregnancy, or that I'm that so excited to meet my baby, or anything along those lines (although those things are true). It's the psychological torture. I'm thinking the government needs to look into this, because I'm pretty sure that I would tell anyone anything just to be able to end this process. To be able to get on with my life. I feel like prolonged labor would be very effective in the War on Terror.

Some days I decide I'm done waiting, that I'm just going to live my life and she'll come when she comes. So I run errands, clean the house, make plans with friends. Then I have contractions five minutes apart for an hour. I sigh, think "finally," start putting some things together for Ben (my bag's been ready for weeks). Then everything stops. No more contractions, and I feel fine. But still I think that if things got going that precipitously and were that intense, delivery is imminent. I don't want to give birth on the beach (Newport is too fancy for that), so I stick close. Waiting. Then nothing.

Then someone says, "Don't be in a hurry. She'll come soon enough. Then things will only get harder, so you should relax and rest while you have the chance."

And reflexively my fists start to curl and I turn into a fire-breathing dragon.

Okay, that one was me being dramatic. But only a little. This isn't my first rodeo--I know what the end of the road looks like, and the anxiety of labor pales in comparison to my anxiety of caring for a newborn and a three-year-old. But that's the thing--the anxiety. Not the actual experience. That I can handle. It will be hard, and I will cry. But it will actually be happening. I'm a rip the band-aid off kind of gal. It's the slow peeling back of the adhesive that hurts. And if anyone thinks relaxation and rest are an option at this point, I would suggest to lay off the crack.

Intellectually I know that I will not be in labor forever. That is a physical impossibility. I know that God is taking care of me and Emma, that things will happen in His timing, that she'll come when she's ready, etc. I know these things. And throughout the course of any given day I feel good about that. I'm good with waiting. And then I have painful contractions every three minutes, then they stop, and I'm back at square one, having a breakdown because I can't fit the pots and pans back in the cabinet.

Yesterday was a dark day. Today is still up for grabs.

For those of you that are sick of my whining (which, at this point, has got to be everyone on the planet) and just want me to give some news and/or a cute picture of a squishy newborn, I can only offer you this for today: I'm having a lot of contractions. I'm going to go to the beach anyway. But don't worry, I'm bringing my mom, just in case she needs to catch my baby. Then tonight we're going to the fair. I'll be bringing Matt, just in case he needs to catch my baby. At some point today I will probably cry my head off, or at least be on the verge of it. At some point today I will think "It's time." Probably it won't be. Probably I will defy biology and be in labor forever and never have a baby.

Either way, I promise to let you know.