The Second Time Around

I miss my first pregnancy. You know, the one where you personalize the indentations of the couch, go to bed at 6:30, and sit in the shallow end of the pool and read for four hours a day at eight months. You know, the one where you get to be pregnant. It's different the second time around. Somehow the pregnancy itself is harder (bad morning sickness becomes hyperemesis, bad heartburn becomes reflux, etc.), which seems a little unfair considering the fact that the last time I spent 20 weeks barfing I didn't have an audience. This time I did. Last time it got hot, I sat in the pool. This time I can't. Last time I got tired I rested. This time instead of personalizing the indentations of the couch, I do laundry, cook, clean, and chase an oft demon-possessed wild animal around the house (usually with laundry in hand). I read the same baby books. Only this time when I got to the part where it said, "take it easy, put your feet up," I laughed. Then cried. Then peed a little, because pregnancy-induced incontinence is real (and, of course, worse the second time around). Then I stopped reading, because who are we kidding, I can only read a paragraph of a book at a time before I need to extricate a shorty from under the table and clean up pee.

I'm at 37 weeks, which means I'm a large suburban house with feet (that I can't see). Everything is harder. All of my internal organs are squashed into a cubic inch between my left lung and my heart. I get tired rolling over. And yet today, while simultaneously recovering from a cold, enjoying day 15 of labor (contractions and all), and entertaining a sick but energetic 3-yr-old, I...

got up at 6:00 with the kid
cleaned the kitchen
did 9 loads of laundry (not a joke)
sorted and bagged all of Ben's old clothes to hand down
got cornered in my garage by a neighbor trying to get me to take sides in his war with our other neighbor
cleaned the living room
did a lunch run
cleaned up barf
wiped someone else's nose approximately 364 times
picked up after the 3-yr-old whilst he played and the two grown men whilst they worked
cleaned the kitchen again
went to the grocery store
made dinner


But today was not completely about my hard work. It was also a lot about my stud of a husband and my saint of a step-dad putting in our air conditioner. Glory to God in the highest.

I probably shouldn't be surprised if I had a baby within the next 24 hours. But I probably would be surprised, because I probably won't have a baby, because it would be way too easy for there to be a clear cause and effect that followed the rules of biology. Because having labor last for less than a month is for sissies, and I am not a sissy.

May I please go back on bed rest? I have an air conditioner now.