5 and Holding, or Not . . .

5 cm dilated, 80% effaced. Isn't that wild? I feel like I could just keep walking around for the next few weeks, having these vague, intermittent contractions, and eventually, one day, I'd look down to see a baby sitting between my feet.

But the doctor wants me to go over to the hospital anyway "just in case," so I'm here at home to get my bag and head out and maybe have a baby today! I'd prefer tomorrow, though--it would be fun for her to have a leap-year birthday, and extra special every 4 years.

Pre-partum Blues

I think I've just about given up hope that this baby will ever come. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm even pregnant, or if I should just take responsibility for what I've done to myself, give up the cookies, and commence with some serious abdominal exercise.

The silly thing is, we didn't even expect her quite yet according to her due date--I've only gotten impatient because for the past 5 days, I've been in and out of fairly regular and sometimes intense contractions, sometimes for hours at a time, which then just . . . fade away.

It's like being a high school girl and having this guy who you never thought would look twice at you call and say, "I want to take you on the greatest, most exciting date ever! Cancel all your upcoming plans, pack your bags, and wait at home--I'll be over as soon as I can." But then, he doesn't show up. You're disappointed, but you go on with things until he calls again the next day. And the next. And the next. And you'd just write him off, except that all signs point to his being serious about showing up at some time and making good on the 24 lbs you've gained in anticipation. Or something like that.

It's funny how I actually feel like I have absolutely no hope that the baby is actually coming--even though of course I know rationally that she is. I guess it goes to show you how faithless your feelings can be, even in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

Jericho

We've been watching this show on DVD over the past few weeks, and it's really good! The pilot begins with the explosion of a nuclear bomb not far from a small Kansas town, but the emphasis of the show is less the scientific storyline and more the drama revolving around several characters' responses to extreme situations that test their mettle and reveal their secrecy-enshrouded pasts. This show is not as fantastical as Lost, which makes me prefer Jericho in that respect (Lost is a lot flashier and sexier). And it's got a couple of really great characters, played by Skeet Ulrich and Lennie James, who are impressive in the range they enact for these roles. Unfortunately, we've now caught up and have to wait until tomorrow night for a new episode. Sigh.

False Alarm

On Thursday, I had a routine doctor's appointment, the first one where the doctor does an exam to check whether any progress has been made toward labor. He was doing his thing, and suddenly stopped, poked his head up, and said, "Whoa!" (Always nice to hear right at that moment) Then he said that I was 4 cm dilated, that he had his hand on the baby's head, and that I should forget what he had just told me about waiting at home for a couple of hours worth of 5-minute-apart contractions. Instead, he said, I should come to the hospital as soon as we could tell they were 5 minutes apart because things could go pretty quickly. And he added that he didn't think I'd make it to my next appointment in a week.

I called Sam, who was apparently so flustered that he wandered into his next class in a daze and eventually had to turn the students loose for "independent work" in their lab for a while. I went back to work, handed off some things in case I wouldn't make it back, and then attended a lecture that I slipped out of at the very end to get home and get things done. We knew that just being dilated didn't mean I was ready to go into labor immediately, but then I started having contractions that got progressively more frequent, until they were about 6 minutes apart.

Let me tell you--there was a flurry of activity around our house that night. We had thought we'd have about 3 more weeks, and we really needed just another weekend to finish things up, but by now we were afraid we wouldn't even have the whole night. The baby's room was done, but my bag wasn't packed and the room for my parents to stay in was still half full of boxes and tools, with no bed, and their bathroom sink and light weren't connected.

So, we worked until 2:30 that night and tried to get a little sleep, and then on Friday, the baby appeared to change her mind. We still stayed home, just in case, but she seems to have nestled in for a while. Still, I'd be surprised if we made it all the way to her due date on March 10 . . .

Of course, whereas before we had not been at all impatient for her to get here (because there was still so much work to be done), now that we're basically ready, neither of us could sleep this morning because we're so excited for her to come.

Nesting Instincts

Not having the actual baby in hand yet, I have time for things like this:

The bassinet is a gift from Sam's friend Charles. This dresser belonged to my mom, then to me, and with a fresh coat of paint (or four) is now the baby's; the items on top of the dresser are shower gifts from our very kind friends at school, and the blanket is one of many, many gifts from my mom (you know how economists keep thinking the economy is going to get really bad, and then it's bad but not quite as bad as expected? That's because my mom is singlehandedly keeping it going! So it's not just our baby, but all of us Americans, who owe her our thanks . . .).

Peeking out from behind the bassinet you can see the boxes of two very thoughtful toy gifts, the Rainforest Bouncer from Sam's parents, and the Baby Einstein play gym from his brother and sister-in-law.

This beautiful crib is a gift from my parents. The two handmade blankets are from my Great Aunt Clem and my Great Aunt Sis, and the little poodle is a present from Kay and Kevin from work.

Can you spot your onesie? Maura and our beloved Rev. Dr., unfortunately, I think yours are folded just behind what's shown . . . I'll just have to owe you pics with the actual baby inside! Kelly, some of yours are there on the right, and on the left are ones from my parents and Sam's family and friends.

If the accessories make the outfit, this little girl will be all set. The handmade bib is also from my Great Aunt Sis, and the other hats and some of the socks are gifts from our friends Steve and Catherine and others from work. Two of the softest little pink socks are special gifts from the baby's cousin, our niece Makahla.

4 Down, 6 to Go

Now we're talking centimeters. Of course, we could hang out here for weeks, but it doesn't seem very likely . . .

37 Down, 3 to Go

Weeks, that is (lbs: 22 and counting. Unfortunately, there's no outer limit there!).

A Tale of Two Houses

Preparing for tomorrow's re-appraisal of this house we've been working on the past year and 2 days (but who's counting?), we're finishing up work on the basement bathroom. The original intent, way back in December, had been simply to replace the toilet, a job the Lowe's book estimated to take 2 hours. Sam figured 4, and I figured a generous 8. Neither of us even came close to the actual time of 8 weeks.

As it turned out, the old toilet was not bolted to the floor. Why? Because there were no bolts. It was simply sitting over the hole to the waste line, like slightly-more-comfortable-than-usual outhouse seat. The floor needed to be ripped up, the concrete drilled into, a new subfloor surface prepared, a flange set to allow the new toilet to be installed, properly this time. In this process, it was discovered not only that the wall behind the toilet had rotted, but also that there was no studding to support that wall--the wall was sort of leaned into place, nailed to light strips of wood, and covered with (hideous) wallpaper. Nice.

So, new bathroom from the ground up, literally. This weekend Sam has re-drywalled, and I have sanded. I'm going to paint in about an hour and then Sam will get the remaining work done on the floor, the new vanity set in place, and hopefully a new light fixture mounted.

The kicker is that the reason a lot of this stuff appears to have been done this way--even serious safety issues, like the furnace vent not being attached, just set into place (so that if it came loose, the CO2 would flow into the house instead of out the vent)--is that the former owner of the house is the code inspector for our town! Guess nobody watches the watcher.

In other news, at my old house this week, the gas line to the main out in the road apparently broke, so that no gas was being delivered to my house. Since no one was living there to notice the rapid onset of the cold, a pipe froze and burst (luckily, it appears to have sprayed just into the unfinished basement drain, so no damage . . . just a big scare, plenty of stress, lots of phone calls, a bill to pay--and some thankfulness for the providence of another realtor happening to show up at the house just as the problem occurred). Drama, drama.

And at this point, may I just offer my deepest and most astonished thanks to State Farm, who said that they don't usually cover the repair of the pipe but would against their policy in our case because it wasn't our fault? And then they told us that they'd give us the benefit of the doubt if it looked like anything other than wear and tear could have caused the break to the gas line, and cover that too. It's unlikely--we'll probably still have to pay it, and it will hurt--but whew, how nice.

One house, I think, would be enough!

In the Family Way

The other day, Sam suggested that we think about getting a minivan.

Now, I feel like I've cheerfully adapted to a number of life changes in the past year: the much-bemoaned yielding of my sovereignty for marriage, giving up my own house for a shared (if incredibly beautiful) space, closing a couple of my own credit cards, accepting the indignities and dependencies of pregnancy, and facing down the psychological crises of impending parenthood. But even with all of that, I'm absolutely certain that I am not ready to own a minivan.

I'm not a person who is terribly attached to her car, nor am I someone who understands cars well enough to know what various makes and models symbolize about the person who owns them. But come on, a minivan? Even for a car-illiterate person, it's a sign of something, a sign that something has happened to you that you cannot ever undo, no matter how many red convertibles you buy around your fiftieth birthday.

So we've been looking at other options. We'd originally intended to get a Prius when we replaced my car, but then I bought the stroller we'd picked out and we saw how it practically bulged out of my current car. I was sad to see that the PT Cruiser and VW Passat (station wagon = acceptable) are not very well ranked on Consumer Reports. We both like Subaru station wagons a lot, but they're all 4-wheel drive, and one of the reasons we're interested in getting a new car is to have a vehicle with better gas mileage than Sam's truck and more comfort/convenience/space than my current car. Apparently, the Toyota Rav4, though it's categorized as an SUV, is built on a Camry frame, so it's comparable to a car in its gas consumption.

Ah, life . . .

Now What?

This past weekend, we were visited by the magnificent Joan and Frank, who actually traveled from balmy North Carolina to western Pennsylvania (yes, in February) to spend the weekend with us. We spent some time in Pittsburgh, cruising Joan's old hangouts--she lived there 20-some years ago--and enjoyed introducing them to some of our friends at dinner on Saturday. But mostly, we sat around eating and talking endlessly. They're that kind of friends, where 6 or so hours sitting around without a plan passes comfortably, easily, warmly.

Our weekend with Joan and Frank was our last big social activity--not only because they're untoppable and it's nice to go out with a bang, but also because we've been hesitant to make big plans in these last few weeks. There's more work to be done on the house: Sam is redoing the basement bathroom for my parents to use when they visit, and I'm re-painting yet again a dresser that once was my mother's, then mine, and now will be the baby's.

In terms of work, I'm in a strange limbo. My leave was approved, then contradicted (but not necessarily rescinded), then I was asked for an application and documentation, which I submitted last semester, and since then I haven't heard anything. All of this is happening through our HR office, which has little to do with my day-to-day work; if I didn't show up for three weeks, they wouldn't know. Or, really, care, I suppose. But thankfully, my department has been very supportive and consistent: I'm working on research (book review done--check! article--not yet), departmental projects ("Who would like to revise our objectives for the 300-level courses?"), a committee report or two, setting up a public reading for May, working on a "What Do I Do With an English Major?" panel, and doing some advising, and then I'll be on leave after the baby comes for a while and come back later in the spring.

What's odd about it is that all of that work could easily approach full-time, and I've been going in to work pretty much every day, and/or working at home. But none of it requires the kinds of late nights grading and lesson planning that teaching demands constantly--teaching usually organizes my time and is the center around which all these other things are usually fitted (or not, as is more often the case). Just knowing that I might actually have time to finish some of these things, along with getting more of the house unpacked and organized and cleaned, alter curtains, assemble & paint furniture, help Sam a little . . . whew. It's like being able to breathe for the first time in, oh, about a year.