Final Stretch?
It’s hard to be patient waiting for a baby, but there are two big factors that help.
There is a strange ocean inside of me. Tiny feet lodge behind my ribs if I allow my body to relax into a curl. A spine rolls across the taut skin of my belly.
At the ultrasound, the little face is squashed hard against the placenta, jaw opening and closing to drink in amniotic fluid. It wriggles, but can’t go far: there isn’t far to go.
“But we can stretch more,” my ultrasound tech tells me. I’m not sure if she means it as a reassurance.
In the gym, I do leg raises, squats, lat pulls, scapular pulls. At the mirror, I breathe to lift the belly and pelvic floor with every exhale: that same core exercise that felt uselessly light at fifteen weeks now a saving grace to hold my posture when I walk. I’ve had almost no low back pain, both miracle and hard work.
On the advice of my local pregnant friends, I’ve invested in a giant, U-shaped pregnancy pillow. It’s magic for that tricky pelvic joint. I got a recommendation on brand, where to buy secondhand in the UK, and checked the tracking page several times a day — waiting for my godsend to arrive, rolling my eyes at the irony that I’ve waited until the baby might reasonably arrive first. But I suspect I’ll need the support postpartum, too.
When I finally get it home, I discover that there are more than three available angles for sleep: with a pillow along my back, I can rest in a whole range of degrees, shifting naturally and without waking in the night. Right away, I feel more rested.
Ironically, more energy also means more angst; I had reached a level of tired where the days slid by. Now, I’m back to being annoyed by my body’s limitations. I go out to walk, but on the way back, the fetus shifts down and becomes achingly heavy against my pelvic floor. By the time I reach the stairs to our apartment, I’m huffing and spacey. A moment to sit becomes several minutes’ blank stare.
One morning in first trimester, I felt better enough to get up. “Long-term improvements,” I muttered to myself, a mantra for the moment of energy. Instead of doing dishes (endless), I repotted plants, scrubbed a stain from the window that I had been spending hours staring at from the couch.
I’m doing better than that now, but there is a similar consciousness of my limited reserves. The baby’s blood comes from my blood. Its bones are built from the calcium of my bones. I’ve been harvesting colostrum as a way to acculturate my body to baby-feeding (I’ve heard the first few days can be painful). That nutrient-dense pre-milk is made of my blood too, and I’m ravenous from filling just one milliliter of an oral syringe.
Hormones are wack. I sob watching some dumb movie with a birth scene. My chin breaks out. I crash at night. And then in the morning I make chai, French toast, pizza dough, sourdough, and a cacao brew before walking to the climbing gym — where I sketch at a table; Robert talks me out of climbing.
It’s hard to be patient waiting for a baby, but there are two big factors that help.
First, there’s a brain growing in there. It will grow and develop outside of my body, and all the systems are working now. But while the placenta is still functioning, I can be sure my baby is getting all the nutrition it needs — it just takes it out of my body. I’m bigger. I have enough body to buffer that.
Second, these are the last days we will ever be just us as a couple.
That’s precious in any relationship, but our math is wild. One year ago today, I was starting to pack for London, hoping I wasn’t a complete fool for falling in love so quickly and thoroughly with someone so very far away.
We’ve only been a couple for fourteen months. Piecing together some non-contiguous time, ten of those have been on the same continent.
And how much of that time have I been pregnant? It occurred to me recently that we’ve only been physically in the same place for one of my “regular” menstrual cycles. Robert reminds me that although this body, restricted capabilities, and shifting hormone set are extraordinary to me, he’s hardly known me any other way.
It’s a shame, really; usually, I’m a lot more fun.
Even though we live together now, Robert’s work takes him out of the house for twelve hours most days, and leaves him exhausted when he’s home. If we can make it to the due date, he gets a couple of days’ rest before the baby comes. Then, he’s on paternity leave for a few much-needed weeks.
Or, if I go into labor right now, he can skip straight out of work and not go back until December. Also tempting.
As the books keep saying, “baby knows best.” It’s trite, but it’s useful to remember: humans vary in all things. Gestational length is, sensibly, normally distributed: about half of pregnant people have their babies by the due date, and only five percent on the day itself. It could be now. It could be a month from now.
I’m at thirty-eight weeks. When I went out volunteering last week, the group leader asked if we should bring a chair for me, and other volunteers made nervous jokes about knowing first aid “just in case.” But I spent the hours pruning water shoots from a big maple, cutting blackberry bramble, feeling basically fine.
Especially with first babies, labor takes some thirty hours and starts at night, usually. Each day when I make it to morning, I figure I might as well go live out the day.
The specific mechanism for onset of labor isn’t known, but it’s believed to be initiated by the fetus itself. Barring medical events that indicate otherwise, that’s when we’ll have the baby.
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