22 / 16 / Really, who knows?

 

This is it.

Okay, not really. It's not it yet, though I feel like I'm constantly on pins and needles. Just about time, right? Any day, right? Ooh, is that a cramp? The earliest sign of labor?

Tomorrow, Tuesday, marks the day that our little one is officially considered "full term." 37 weeks. He could be born tomorrow and not be considered premature. That means he's more or less ready to come out, right? Any time now, right? Ooh, is that another cramp?

Doing the math then, there are 22 days to go. Only, there might not be. More accurately - according to my doctor - there probably aren't. Little Steff Man, determined to do things his own way, is breech. Butt down actually, with his legs folded up close to his face. There is, apparently, not a doctor on the East Coast who will deliver a breech baby. I've done acupuncture, I've tried moxibustion, I've layed at home with my face in the ground and my backside high in the air. No success. In the face of all this, and as the window of "he can still turn" has just about passed, I've been scheduled for a C-Section. December 29th. 16 days from now. 16 days! That's just a little more than two weeks! Is that possible? Honestly, I kind of thought I would just be pregnant forever; never actually have the child.

There are about a million different thoughts going through my head. Sadness at the thought of missing out on labor. Nervousness about the possibility of surgery (I've never even sprained an ankle before). Certainty that there must be something I'm forgetting to research. Uncertainty: has it finally become too much to walk to work? Above all these though, is the one thought that comes to me strongly and regularly during the course of each day: my lord, I can't wait. I can't wait to meet him, to look into his eyes for the first time, to be his mother. I'm glad this thought trumps everything else, because it's helping me get past the details and just focus on that one important thing.

Ooh, is that a cramp?

A final bit: nicknames we've been using these last months:

*Milk-fed piglet

*Sweetmeat

*Chubba the Hut (after a recent ultrasound picture seemed to show an enormous set of cheeks and a weird, Jabba The Hut-like eye)

*Little Monkey

*Chen (won't try to explain the pronunciation; this is the German suffix that makes something a diminutive. It's basically like calling him "Little.")

*Scrumchkin (scrumptious munchkin)

Just a couple more weeks and we can use his real name...