When the Baby Falls Out

We started talking about when the baby falls out when I first got pregnant, though the conversation has evolved dramatically since it began.  It started with my 8 week appointment when I nervously awaited the results of the pregnancy test that the nurse had administered.  I don't even remember how many pregnancy test I'd taken, but despite the consistent results, I'd convinced myself that somehow, since the last time I peed on a stick, the baby had fallen out.  There had been no visual evidence of this happening, but I still was pretty sure it did.

Crazy only gets worse when you are pregnant.

After the appointment every bit of moisture I felt down there was the baby, once again, falling out.  Though most of the time I felt pretty sure about this pregnancy, I still worried a lot about miscarriage.  I think I felt like things had just gone too easily for us.  Tragedy could strike at any minute. 

It didn't.  Everything has been going great.  No scares or mishaps.  Being pregnant is definitely not fun, but it really hasn't been that terrible either.  We have been incredibly lucky.

And now we are rapidly approaching the time when the baby is supposed to fall out.  It's a difficult mental transition to make; going from continuously and neurotically willing the baby to stay in to anxiously awaiting the day she arrives.  When I get a weird twinge or pain my first reaction is panic, but it's getting to be that time. 

I refuse to call it "going into labor".  I make DH and everyone around me call it "when the baby falls out" because I'm hoping it will be a self fulfilling prophecy.  Maybe if I just believe she will slide down the birth canal like a she is being shot out of a water slide, it will just happen. 

We really haven't been doing the prep work I planned to do either.  I was obsessively reading books on childbirth for awhile and I was pushing DH to be my birth coach a la the Bradley Method. Making him be "coach hubby" hasn't worked so well because my mood swings have rendered him terrified of me.  And I myself have put more work into meal planning this week than I have into getting ready for this thing to happen.

Maybe now is when I should be freaking out.

But I'm not.  

11 more days (+ or -).