Oh, the waiting is the hardest part.

I’m pregnant, and I’ve been pregnant now for a full 41 weeks.  Now I’ve got no complaints about this pregnancy - it couldn’t have been smoother.  I’ve had hardly a food aversion, an ache, a pain, a night of lost sleep.  It’s been smooth sailing from the get.  Except that I’m still sailing - right past my due date.  So last night I started to feel a little mentally ill about the whole thing.  Not totally mentally ill, but just a mild case.  As if the weather had just caused a flare up or something.  We’d talked with my doctor a week prior about how long past my due date we should wait before being induced.  The first conversation landed us with planning for an induction one week past the due date.  At the time it seemed like a good idea.  No need to have the baby stew in the amniotic fluid too long, right?

Well.  Then I started researching this decision a bit further.  It’s what I do.  I need all of the information.  I learned a lot more about the pros and cons of being induced, and quickly decided it was not for me.  Not yet, anyway.  And that’s not to say there aren’t plenty of other women who might find themselves in my exact situation who would totally opt for the induction.  Like I said, it’s just not for me.

Now as an aside, there is still a chance that I might have to be induced, and that’s totally fine with me.  If that time comes, it means we’ll have more data in favor of an induction being a good thing.  I need data to make decisions.  It’s just how I am.  If there is anything I’ve learned throughout this pregnancy, it’s that all of the decisions made along the way - no matter how much data one has available - are so intensely personal.  And I imagine parenting will be a lot like that too.  No matter how much others want to weigh in with their opinions and advice, you just simply can’t move forward until you are completely comfortable with your own decisions.  At least that’s how it’s worked for me so far, and my husband and I have been a totally united front throughout this whole thing.  Sometimes tuning out the noise coming from all directions seems absolutely impossible, but I’ve managed to find a way throughout this whole experience to ground myself and keep my center stable so that I have that little part inside of me that I can check in with every now and then to make sure I’m not rotating completely off of my own axis.  Plus I have a husband who is an expert at sensing when my axis might be a little off kilter, and who can give me just enough of a nudge to right things before I get all wobbley. 

So when we saw the doctor again this past Monday - after a weekend spent feeling fairly apprehensive about the impending induction - I brought up my concerns about being induced.  The doctor was awesome.  She totally heard what I was saying and we came up with an alternative plan, which included having an ultrasound a few days later.  I left her office on Monday feeling lighter, happier, and generally more relaxed.

But then I had three full days to pine over the thousand scenarios that could be playing out in my womb as I waited patiently for my Thursday morning ultrasound.  Hence the mental illness from last night, though not all a bad thing since I was able to channel it into a thorough scrubbing of the floors at home.  (I figured it might send me into labor.   It didn’t.  But it DID keep me from having ice cream for the first night in probably three solid weeks.  Hopefully my thighs will thank me later.)

So this morning was the ultrasound - the second one of the pregnancy.

You take it on faith, you take it to the heart.  The waiting is the hardest part.

Now our first ultrasound was amazing.  It was done at about 20 weeks.  Although I’d heard the heartbeat a few times by then, the ultrasound was hard evidence that there was really a child inside of me, rather than the tumor I’d convinced myself I was growing as part of what clearly I thought was just a hysterical pregnancy surely to end only in a giant fart in the wind.  (I’m serious.  Have you READ about what happened to Mary Tudor?)  But when the ultrasound technician put that wand against my jellied abdomen and we actually SAW a baby, well it was all over for me, man.  I believed in miracles all over again and I felt like the luckiest woman in the world - especially when I looked over and saw my beaming husband.  It’s one of those moments in life I think I’ll never forget.  Nothing could have prepared me for the experience.  Nothing. 

Of course it was quickly followed by the holy-shit-we’re-having-a-baby-in-20-weeks-and-nothing-is-ready thought that hit me like a brick on the head after the haze of the ultrasound wore off.  That was fun.  (And who knew we’d have these extra weeks?)

So today I had a much better idea of what to expect.  I knew we would actually be able to see real parts of a real baby and that I would get some hard data on whether this whole ship was still safely afloat.  But I also had my mental illness singing away in my brain because I knew we might not get great news, and that if the news was anything less than great I would be taken to another part of the hospital so that the doctor could induce labor and begin the long process of coaxing what might not be a thriving child into the world.  We were even told to “have the bag packed and in the car” in case it turned out to be go-time.  The prospect of what “might” happen was casting a shadow that made the rest of the possibilities lit too dimly for me to see.  (Between me and my husband, clearly I am the pessimist.)

What I didn’t expect, and what we actually got, was perfection.  Absolute perfection.  We saw that child’s little heart beating just like it should, its diaphragm bobbing up and down in full blown breathing rehearsal, its little arms moving about, even its little facial features down to spotting it blink an eye and purse its lips as it brought its hand to its little mouth.  (A self-soother!  Hallelujah!  Now I’m REALLY ready for the baby to get here!)  This child, at least right now, today, is healthy.  And for that I am both relieved and overjoyed beyond belief.

Baby you’re the only one that’s ever known how.  To make me wanna live like I wanna live now.  The waiting is the hardest part.

This of course brings us back to the waiting.  I find it astounding, just absolutely astounding, that nobody - NOBODY - knows what REALLY gets labor started.  There are theories, there are old wives tales, there is a lot of hearsay out there about what does it.  There are even hormonal/chemical explanations of what does it  - which is why it can be induced at all (even though what you don’t tend to hear is that inductions can be unsuccessful, increasing the probability of needing a c-section).  But there is no concrete evidence anywhere that any doctor anywhere can go on to tell a woman when her body will start this magical process of birthing a baby.  The medical professionals we’ve interacted with over the past several months all fully admit this. 

And maybe it’s a good thing.  Maybe that’s the way it should be.  Maybe we don’t appreciate the mysteriousness and magic of it nearly enough.  Or maybe other people totally get this and it’s just that I never appreciated this before, and this is just one of those lessons it was time for me to learn.  I’m sure this is only one of many lessons becoming a parent will bring.  In fact, I’ve no doubt.  I think there was a part of me that needed this example of just how much control over my life is now gone.  Gone forever.  And as apprehensive as I’ve been about that part of becoming a parent up until now, I think I’m finally fine with this loss of control.  I think I’m ready for one wild ride.  From where I stand now, it seems like a small price to pay to feel this kind of joy.

Oh baby, don’t it feel like heaven right now?  Don’t it feel like somethin’ from a dream…

So we’re back to waiting.  This time it’s a looser, funkier, happier kind of waiting, but we’re still waiting.  And looking back over 41 weeks of a picture-perfect pregnancy, for me, the waiting really is the hardest part.

Of course, labor might change my mind.  Stay tuned…

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Parenthood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, bookmark the Permalink in your Browser, leave a response, or trackback from your own site.