<—–Due date's tomorrow. Am I awe-inspiring, or what?
I'm glad I have the blog. Because I'm showing them off, I've taken soooo many more pregnancy photos than I did in pregnancies before I had the blog. I will be glad to look at this later.
***
At coffee-and-doughnuts after Mass — I am convinced, by the way, that despite energetic catechesis to the contrary, my kids believe that "doughnuts after Mass" is the eighth sacrament of the Church — a male parishioner came up to me and said, "You know, from behind you, I would never have thought that you were pregnant."
What a nice thing to say to a huge, under-five-foot-tall, lumbering pregnant woman! I thanked him.
My husband had a different take on the comment when I told him about it later. He laughed. "I could interpret that on a lot of levels," Mark told me, "but the simplest interpretation was that he was looking at your butt."
I don't care. It was still nice to hear. Even if the proper translation is Wow! I was ogling your backside and then you turned around and you were, like, all MATERNAL and everything! Kind of like "The Crying Game" only marginally less emasculating.
* * *
Me, last night:
"Argh! These on-and-off false-labor contractions are weighing very heavily on my… my… my psyche, my id… what is it you call the part of yourself that needs to, you know, plan for stuff and know what's going on?"
Mark:
"What, you mean 'the core of your very being?'"
***
Resolved: I will not get depressed about "not getting much schoolwork done" and will instead make the kids watch a lot of nature movies and other pseudo-educational DVDs from the library. Right now they are working their way through four episodes of Popular Mechanics For Kids: The Science of Extreme Sports. Up next: a movie about Rembrandt (I am pretty sure it is the artist, not the toothpaste) and then one about anatomy and genetics. If I run out of stuff like that, there's always the graphic underground childbirth tape.
***
The more-senior of my two midwives attended 2 births in the 24 hours before my appointment yesterday, so she cancelled it. I expect she needs some sleep. So I spent yesterday evening on and off the phone with my other midwife — I am sooooo thankful I was able to have two for this pregnancy — being reassured that I was still having "turning contractions" and that I would, in fact, know when I go into labor. This whole posterior-baby thing feels so different from my three previous pregnancies that it's really throwing me off.
I'm kind of glad I had a chance to talk at length to the second midwife last night, even if I was a little alarmed at the two other births happening so close to mine (I didn't think she had any more January babies — the February ones must have showed up early). The second midwife was apprentice to the first midwife when I gave birth to Milo and to MJ, and it is hard for me not to think of her as "the apprentice" or "the assistant" any more, even though she has been practicing on her own for three years now. I have tended to think of the senior midwife, who attended all three of my other births (the first with her longtime partner who is now deceased), as the "main" midwife and the younger one as the "back-up" or "assistant" midwife, hired because she lives a lot closer to me and I wasn't comfortable with the risk of delivering unassisted should the perfect storm arise the day I go into labor. But this is not really fair to her; she is very capable and professional. (Maybe it's just that she's about my own age, with children close in age to mine!) I feel much more confident and pleased about having her around to support me now that I've had a chance to lean on her a little bit. More like that's a positive, good thing, as opposed to something chosen simply because I was fearful that the senior midwife wouldn't arrive on time to help us (it happens…)
Home birth forces the parents to accept the responsibility of birth, and the nature of birth as it is, I think. But (unless you go the unassisted route, a choice which I do not condemn) there is still a complex interplay of trust between the parents and other support persons. The mother can trust too much, for sure, become too dependent on external support, external information, and lose that sense of ownership and responsibility. On the other hand, there must be some level of trust and willingness to depend on the people who are around you. If that trust can't be mustered, then there's probably something wrong and maybe that person shouldn't be at your birth. It's such a vulnerable time, even though it is a strong time too.
I have a hypothesis that, as a survival mechanism, a laboring woman instinctively reaches out to use all the resources at her disposal, to use them to their fullest in coping with and surrendering to labor; and instinctively loses her desire for anything she cannot obtain. What good is pining for people and things you can't have?
In retrospect, it has seemed that every person who was there during my births was absolutely essential to my well-being. The labor tub I had in my first birth was absolutely necessary. In my second birth, when I didn't have it, I didn't need it, didn't even want it. I think this is part of the reason why, even when they respecting each other's choices, women who have used and enjoyed (say) epidural anesthesia, and women who have never even considered it, have trouble understanding each other. If I can place medical pain relief physically or mentally out of reach, I literally do not want it. But it makes sense to me that if it is an option, I might desire it.
This is how strength and vulnerability co-exist: a perfect, instinctive balance between perception of wants/needs, and the real resources available. At least that's how I've experienced it. At few other times in my life have I wanted exactly what I was rightly able to have, no more and no less.
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