40+6 (but not really)

If you put any stock in this kind of thing, my "estimated date of delivery" (EDD) was nearly a week ago. Since I don't, since I realize that 40 weeks from the last menstrual period (LMP) is only an average and that most women fall anywhere between 37 and 42 weeks and this is all considered very normal, I'm not that fussed about it.

Today, I had an appointment with my midwife, and after holding steady at the same weight for nearly a month, I gained three pounds this past week. I can feel it in my ankles and lower legs: it's fluid. I can maybe see it in my face a bit, too.

Can't help it; still cute.

My blood pressure is still good, the fetal heart rate is super strong, and speeds up when the baby moves. Because "we don't operate in a vacuum," I'm going to have an ultrasound next Tuesday just to make sure we're all doing okay in there. I'm hoping that we'll be able to push the due date back to something more reasonable at that point, to buy me more time. The midwives aren't concerned, but I think they have to do due diligence in order not to look like they're eschewing any kind of medically-acknowledged prudence.

I'm feeling great, health-wise, and am going to attempt to ride my bike this evening for the first time in a couple of weeks. Just two miles, but I've been getting so much sleep and feeling the pull of gravity very heavily when I try to walk or bike so have slacked off a bit this past few days.

Plus, I have been feeling somewhat petulant. This whole being out of sorts thing has shaped up both in my eating habits teetering on "junk food overload" (in order to claim ownership over my body and my desires, instead of catering solely to "the baby," as if to prove I'm not "just" an incubator) and in just being too mehh to get motivated.

In order to calm myself down, yesterday I took to reading articles with titles like "How can I maintain ownership of my body while I'm pregnant?" (there is some great, polite, level-headed advice in there) just to make me feel better about... well, feeling bad. I know that when people ask me about "the baby," and how I'm doing (translation: "Are you planning to move the baby to somewhere outside of your own body soon?"), and talk in concrete terms and with certainty about a child who does not yet seem as real to me as he/she apparently seems to other people that they mean well and are excited for and love us. Mentally. I know this. I get it. But it makes me feel like I'm being reached into without permission, like I don't get to say, "This is where you end and I begin, and right now I'm a pregnant mother of exactly one child, so when YOU talk about this baby in a way that implies I have two children, I feel like you're projecting onto me your hopes and dreams and it is A LOT OF PRESSURE."

This might not make sense to anyone else, but it is my reality. And especially when people refer to the baby possessively. I don't feel like it's "mine" yet. How can it already be yours? We could discuss for hours what this means about my being territorial, or overly-cautious about outcomes based on my age and history, or just being a bitch. But, ultimately, it's how I've been feeling, and that's the way it is.

Last night, when James came home, I knew I was VERY needy. I warned him about it during dinner, that I desperately needed some of his time. And after dinner, I asked him to do something I've never asked him to do before. I asked my sweet husband to sit down on the couch and let me lie my head in his lap, and I asked him to pet me and to talk to me and just let me look at him and feel his presence and be there.

Of course, he did just this. And I know now why it seems like Aish is always jonesing for this kind of attention. Within half an hour, I felt like myself again. I was so calm and happy and rested, and went to bed a little bit after eight o'clock feeling refilled and so much less rebellious.

Later in the night, I woke up to find James in bed. I hadn't awakened when he slipped in, but he was lying on "my" side of the bed, jack-knife straight on a tiny edge, because I was sprawled on my right side with my legs extended to the side, and my arms outstretched, enveloping his pillow.

That man makes sure I feel loved and taken care of; he's the greatest thing ever, and I'm so glad he's my partner in this and in everything.

Saturday, the high is supposed to be 74 degrees, and I plan to spend as much of the day as possible outside (there might be rain; fortunately, I don't melt) and definitely have the doors open and some cross-breeze going, even if it means inviting in the humidity. I always feel like I'm being reborn in the fall. After months of holing up indoors, separated from the sounds and smells of outside by climate control (for which I am infinitely grateful), it feels like reconnecting to the world again, but kind of for the first time. I'm ready!