I Was Wrong

Okay, so I have to confess ... I was wrong.

About a lot of things.

Despite the fact that one of my doctors kept reminding us that, "We've changed your physiology yet again -- you can't expect things to be the same as they were last time, we expected this baby to arrive with the same timing as Caden. When my cerclage came out on Monday and I was released from bedrest, we thought I'd go into labor right away.

Um ... no. It's almost a week later, and I'm still pregnant. In fact, I'm 37 weeks, which is considered full-term. Wow. This will be my only child who was not a preemie.

We thought that this baby was measuring so big that there was no way the doctors would let us go past next Friday -- that I would be induced very soon.

Um ... no. In fact, it appears as though this baby's apparently prodigious growth has slowed down a little bit. At our last growth ultrasound, the baby was measuring just sightly above average. As a result, I doubt I will be induced.

I thought that I'd be able to come off of five months of bedrest and just resume my old life with no difficulty.

Um ... no. On my second day after being released from bedrest, my mom and I went to Target to buy some California Baby soap and lotion for the new baby. We walked in, went directly to the baby soap, looked briefly at the maternity clothes, bought Caden a new tractor shirt (he had outgrown his old one), and checked out. That's all. And I was completely exhausted by that thirty minute outing.

While I've been loving having no doctor-imposed restrictions, I've been very frustrated by my physical limitations. I really would like to walk Caden to the playground just down the street from our house, but there's a (very) slight hill, and honestly I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to make it back up the hill. I'm in that bad of physical condition. (Also, any of you who are friends with Scott on Facebook might have read that he saw a mountain lion just down the road from the playground. I'm a little bit afraid that Caden would look like a delicious appetizer and I would look like a very slowly-moving main course, so I've been hesitant to venture down there on my own.) Readjusting my idea of what my life should look like now has been a struggle for me. I want to be able to do everything, but even standing long enough to wash the dishes leaves me tired and shaking.

I've had to reconsider a lot of my old assumptions with this portion of the pregnancy. I have never been pregnant this long, and I have no idea how much longer I will be pregnant. I've become one of those stories that all bedrest mamas hear about: A woman was on bedrest for umpteen weeks, while the doctors desperately tried to keep her pregnant for as long as possible, and when she was released from bedrest, she didn't go into labor.

We have no doubt that my body doesn't want to work the way it should -- I require medical intervention to stay pregnant long enough to have a healthy baby. That is not in doubt. So, for me to have stayed pregnant so long is a bit of a surprise. We do have some physiological explanations for this -- the development of scar tissue is one possibility. But I think I know the real reason.

God is cool.

I hope to have a baby very soon, but if I don't I'll just try to take each day at a time and appreciate the miracle this pregnancy has been.