Laughing into Labor + Hello Moon + Goodbye, Thank Yous
Yesterday was the first day where I felt like something is really happening here. I can’t really put my finger on it, but all of a sudden I felt like maybe this baby is coming a lot sooner than I thought.
Over the last couple of weeks, people would ask my due date, which is June 4th, but the date May 31st would pop into my head. For some reason, I just felt like this baby is going to be a May baby. I can’t really explain it, but who can explain your intuition. I felt great – cool, calm and collected. I even started thinking about how I wanted to spend the night of Saturday, May 30th, surrounded by people who make me laugh really hard.
I met Laura on Saturday. She told me her “birth story.” She went out for dinner and had two beers, even though she hadn’t drank throughout her pregnancy. But she laughed and laughed. Later she went home, her water broke and the baby came THREE HOURS later. When another person began to tell me about their 26-hour labor, I promptly turned my back and said, “I want to be like you.”
Yesterday I read a couple of birth stories from Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, which Sarah gave me for Christmas. In December, I almost passed out when I flipped through it and saw the line drawings of native South American birth scenes. Every one was nude and the pregnant woman was holding on to a rope in a tree. I thought I would try reading it again in my eighth month. I started a few weeks ago, but didn’t really dive back in until I finished my pleasure reading this week. Technically today is my last day of my eighth month. So I am not too far behind.
Hmmm… how do I put this. The philosophy of this book is VERY natural. Way more natural than me. These stories are women who went to The Farm, a commune of midwives in Tennessee to have their baby. What I didn’t realize until my latest readings is that some of their philosophy is somewhat inline with this article from the NYT that Sherri sent me in December. While the NYT article horrified some of my friends, it promptly gave me the giggles. And yesterday as I told Meredith about this one birth story in which a nurse said, “You need a kiss,” I thought that I would die. Meredith was furious. I was dying laughing. Maybe this book is in my birth plan, because it truly makes me laugh. Very, very hard.
After a morning of laughing and fighting a nap, I went to lunch. Once I returned home, I finally gave in to my nap. Early evening, I didn’t feel that great. All of a sudden it struck me that maybe I should check out the moon phases for May. There is a full moon this weekend. Specifically on Saturday, May 9th, which is my dad’s birthday. With thoughts of all of the things I still need to do (pack, find a pediatrician, install the car seat, buy a changing pad), maybe my Memaw and my aunt Cheryl are conspiring up above to give my dad someone new to share his birthday. Could that be possible? I guess that nothing is impossible.
Instead of packing my suitcase, or even figuring out my list of things to pack, I decided to spend most of the evening on the couch and focused on my thank yous. I have completely neglected them and I have an obscene number to write. Plus I bought sixty stamps a few weeks ago fully aware that the postage rate is going up this Monday, May 11th. But I made a great first attempt last night. So I need to finish writing them, and not just because I am being a little paranoid. But so I don’t have to buy sixty stamps for additional postage sometime next week.
