Friday, December 28, 2007

This is one Emotional Rollercoaster...

So, you know how about a week or so ago I pronounced that no longer had any agenda about Scarlett's arrival and that I would be happy for her to come on her own schedule?

Well, I lied. How quickly we forget! Now that the misery of being sick is forgotten and less than two weeks remain until my due date, my stress levels are climbing again, mostly due to my weekly doctor visit at which I was informed, AGAIN, that I had no sign of dilation or effacement. Well, the doctor allowed, maybe a TEENSY bit effaced. But she may have said that to make me feel better.

Now, I trusty-old-googled all this effacement and dilation stuff, and besides finding a really neat cartoon of a baby being born which I had great fun fast-forwarding through, making the baby shoot like a rocket out of the cartoon vagina, and informing my husband THAT's how it's going to happen for us!, I found some information that should make me feel better. Apparently early dilation and effacement is not a particularly sure sign of labor to come...some people can be dilated for weeks with labor still not starting, and for others it can happen instantaneously. Okay, that's good...

But I'm just worried that my daughter is going to do what I apparently did to my poor mother...according to her, I was SEVENTEEN days late. Now, let's be scientific about this. My mom, like me, had extremely irregular cycles; she wasn't aware for quite some time she was pregnant (although she found out earlier with me than with my sister, who informed the clue-ignoring woman of her presence with a big KICK right around 20 weeks!) and this was 28 years ago when technology could not have been quite as exact. So I'm guessing that my due date may have been off. One of my baby books says that probably 70% of late pregnancies are due to due-date miscalculations and variations in people's cycles.

But I, on the other hand, was taking Clomid, so I was on a SCHEDULE. I felt the pain of ovulation on that 14th day, and as instructed we did our duty on the 13th and 15th days, after abstaining for about a week before and a week after. So my due date, the 10th of January, has got to be pretty near spot-on, right? I'm just trying to justify reasons in my head for WHY THIS CHILD NEEDS TO BE ON TIME.

If she decides to be substantially late, the earliest and only date my doctor has available to induce me is the 18th! The bad things about this would be that my best friend Emily (whom I really want to be here) would be out of town, my in-laws (whom I really DON'T want to be here, just because I don't think I can handle houseguests too soon) would be IN town, and school would be starting only FOUR days later!! AUGH! The good things about her being late are....oh wait, NOTHING. Not a dang thing.

I know this is out of my hands. I know that a healthy happy baby is far and away the most important thing. I also know that for the next two weeks (possibly more! Yikes!) all I'm going to be doing is obsessing about this. Being a control freak is such a curse! So anyone out there, please send all tractor-beam, baby-coaxing emissions my way with wishes that sometime in the next two weeks, this little girl will decide, on her own, to get this show on the road!

3 comments:

Emily Main said...

Am sending all tractor-beam, baby-coaxing emissions your way.... see... ****---->>>>****(<-tractor-beam, baby-coaxing emissions)

lorieloo said...

oh babe, I TOTALLY hear your pain. I was 41 weeks pregnant, and like you, pretty dead on as far as due dates are concerned and I wasn't dilated or effaced at all. Talk about a bad day. But when I did finally go into labor it happened all within one day, effaced, dilated, everything. I ended up with a C-section, but that wasn't because I was over due.

It's so easy now that I'm on the other end to say "hang in there", or "she'll come when it's ready" but knowing how annoying it is to hear all of those things when all you really want is your baby to come, I'll just shut up, say good luck!

Take long walks, go out to eat with your hubby, go to the movies, do all those things you can't do with a newborn and try to savor these last fews days as a family of 2. I'm so excited to see little Scarlett and I don't even know you!=)

Oh and if all else fails, clean out the freezer. I tried cleaning out the garage, but that didn't work. Throwing old freezer burned food did the trick=)

sorry for the excessively long comment.

natasha | sohobutterfly said...

Also sending tractor-beam, baby-coaxing emissions you way............................................................ EFFACE DAMNIT! (oops, sorry for the outburst)