Still Not King

[dr_pretentious]

No, the baby hasn't been born yet.

The whole concept of the due date is a sort of accident of history. Some 19th century German doctor pulled a figure out of the air and declared that pregnancy lasts ten lunar months, because ten is a nice, easy number to remember. That gets us 40 weeks, which is also a nice, easy number to remember. Not that he had any evidence or anything. And this is obstetrics we're talking about here--a branch of medicine whose practitioners have never let evidence get in the way of their cherished traditions. To this day, doctors get all fussy around the 40 week mark, though they ought to know better. I ought to know better than to be discouraged at running "post-dates", considering that I fired my OB and took up with a midwife precisely so that I wouldn't be under pressure to do silly things like induce labor over some 19th century guy's evidence-free supposition.

Really large studies show that pregnancies that result in live births, if labor is not brought on early with induction drugs or cesarean sections, last an average of 41 1/2 weeks, which is not nearly as round and easy a number to remember as 40. So the Nubbin isn't really running late yet, now that we're at the 41 week mark and he's still stubbornly in utero. He's not late, not imperiled, not unusual. Just mighty uncomfortable to carry around, is all.

I may not be as big as a house, but I am pretty sure that, even in the current real estate market, there are still million-dollar condos in Manhattan that are smaller than I am. See what I mean? Ikea makes whole living room ensembles that could fit in that belly. (By the way, since some of you have asked for them, more pictures will be going up over there soon. Dan suddenly realized how few pictures we had from the pregnancy, so he cajoled me into a morning-long photo shoot in which I displayed most of my maternity wardrobe. I told him I was his Malibu Gravid Barbie.)

My midwife predicts that the baby will be a perfectly manageable size, as far as birthing goes. It's just that, because I'm very short, there's nowhere for him to expand right now but straight forward, so he gives the visual impression of being a very big baby. It hadn't even occurred to me to worry about whether he'd be too big to deliver, since I've been lugging around these childbearing hips since I was 13. Two and a half decades of not being able to buy a flattering pair of jeans will be absolutely worth it if the hips get us both through the birth all right.

Some weeks ago, my doula told me that women who run past their due dates tend to get a weird delusion--they come to feel they've missed their chance to get the baby out, and now they are stuck being pregnant forever. When she told me, I thought, oh, how interesting, but that won't happen to me, because I won't run post-dates. Hah. Here I am at week 41, with exactly the same bizarre notion. If it weren't for the sciatica (much worse in recent days--pain management is basically a full time job now), I'd be tempted to call all my tutoring clients who are on hiatus and tell them we might as well get back to work, since my kicky little abdominal companion has decided not to come out after all.

Fortunately, I learned about delusions like this in grad school, where nearly everyone I know who made it to the end of the dissertation developed two delusions. For the last months leading up to the endgame, we believed we would never finish, no matter what, and it was hard to dismiss that as delusion, since many people in fact don't finish. But then, as our defense dates approached, we each in turn came to believe that we'd die in freak accidents before we could graduate. I thought I'd be hit by a bus. sporos thought the last chunks of Skylab would fall out of the sky and land on him. Getting struck by lightning was a pretty common expectation. We laughed about it, because we knew it was crazy, but so many things had thwarted us over the years, it seemed impossible that we could live to see victory.

The thing is, you don't have to believe you'll make it to the end in order to make it to the end. Optimism, although useful, is not necessary. I can sit here feeling, with the strangest visceral certainty, that I will be pregnant forever, but the baby is still going to get born, somehow, one of these days.

Comments

[annathepiper]

That's a great picture! And I look forward to your announcement about the little one, whenever he's ready to join us.

[louiseroho.livejournal.com]

You look absolutely gorgeous.

[kjlj.livejournal.com]

yeah, it's a fantastic picture! and we're sending you love and all the beautiful baby love you have room for! We've already sent in the order for a quick and easy delivery, btw.

[kjlj.livejournal.com]

PS when you get a chance will you friend me under my new lj name so we can keep in touch with you, in case you decide to go all f-locked or something...

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Consider it done.

I like it that you have a personal lj again. Your reminiscences are fun to read. Next time I wonder what to give the person who has everything, I'll know that the answer is a used army barracks to store the everything in. Who else would think of that?

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

He's not late, not imperiled, not unusual. Just mighty uncomfortable to carry around, is all.

That is a great insight, good for you!

Here's another one...
you don't have to believe you'll make it to the end in order to make it to the end

There are benefits at times to being a person of faith...

I'm thinking of you often and with much love & positive energy for the birth!

[kistha.livejournal.com]

Good to see you and the nubbin. :)

It's very cool, and pregnancy delusions are an interesting bunch! Short people frequently do the "giant looking baby" thing, since there is no up/down to expand to. One more reason to wish for a longer waist - less compression! :)

Can't wait to hear the good news....

Loves

[amheriksha.livejournal.com]

You look lovely! I'm glad the little gent has gone the route of the long gestation baby rather than the preemie. I think I took years off my poor mother's life when I pulled that crap. :D

Good luck with the wee one, and I'm sending good energy as well for a quick and healthy birth!

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

Seconded on the Better "Late" Than Premature front.

[sligoe.livejournal.com]

You are perfecttly radiant!

The Universe knows when it's time. Babies have a way of being born at just the right moment---when the longing for that little face is so intense that the love is just pouring out and all over them. I wonder if babies aren't wiser than we think...

Lots of hugs and good wishes and loving energy for Mommy, Daddy and Beautiful Boy. What a family the three of you will make!

[happy-dr-friend.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember that last month when you have to beat off real estate dealers trying to rent your belly. It ends eventually, even if right now you feel like it never will. You look lovely and happy.

40 weeks may have been pulled out of someone's oriface (probably after he said something unfriendly to someone in that last month), but there isn't a lot of leeway on the post-term side and fetal deaths start increasing around 42 weeks. You might start wanting to do morning kick counts and think about a non-stress test to make sure Nubbin is happy and just in no hurry to get out into the world. (One point about kick counts, though, there is a particular protocol that I don't remember and if you get a low count you're supposed to repeat it before even considering worrying--the Nubbin might just have been sleeping the first time.) I'm sure your midwife is on all this anyway.

BTW, we've got a neighbor with a baby who is just outgrowing newborn clothes. Need some more?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Never fear, the midwife is on the case. I've got a non-stress test tomorrow, a biophysical profile ultrasound at the hospital on Wednesday, and another midwife appointment on Friday. If the baby's not out before the weekend, it won't be for lack of examination. He seems, weirdly enough, to be more active now that he has less room to play in, to the point where I've stopped doing regular daily kick counts with the timer and the hash marks on the page. Before I have a chance to wonder whether he's all right, he's already trying to stretch his legs or punch my bladder. He's a vigorous little guy.

If I have to have an athletic child, I hope he at least has the geekitude to take up a weird sport, like cricket or something. If he insists on applying all this energy to football, I'm not sure what I'll do.

Thanks for the offer of the clothes, but we're so well supplied that we're totally out of space to store what we have. We got a good-sized bureau for the baby's room, thinking we'd be able to put away all the shower gifts and hand-me-downs, but it turned out that just the newborn-to-three-months clothes were enough to fill the bureau to overflowing. To make room for the three-months through toddler-sized stuff we've got stockpiled, we have had to undertake a major book purge in the attic. It's incredible how much space can get taken up by such tiny little garments.

[happy-dr-friend.livejournal.com]

PS: Critter loved your picture but wanted to see inside the belly. Got any ultrasound pictures?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

If I'm still pregnant on Wednesday, I should get some new ones from the biophysical profile. We haven't done any ultrasounds since switching to the midwife, so the ones I have are all from before we were six months along. Dan has plans to expand the photo gallery once we're all housebound and nobody at the office expects him to debug anything. I'll put in a bid for ultrasounds when the time comes. We have some really early pictures from the fertility clinic, including a much-blown-up photo from the embryology lab of three little cell clusters. A chronicle might as well be thorough.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

At some point I'll need to figure out what we're doing for a child blessing. There are so many friends and relatives, we'll need to find a sizable place to hold it--the house was definitely too small for the baby shower. At times like this, I'm really glad I don't have to worry about things like original sin and unfavorable afterlives. I don't know how people whose sacramental paradigm requires baptism cope with the logistics. Right now, I'm just hanging on day to day, waiting for the birth, but once I've had a few weeks to recover, it ought to be possible to schedule a meet-the-baby celebration for between Thanksgiving and Yule.

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

You could always wait until Beltane or something. But you probably shouldn't take my advise too seriously since we never had a baby blessing and Andrew is fast approaching age 2. Although we had some major complications along the way.

I'll be happy to just see pictures online until life settles down for you.

[stasiaone.livejournal.com]

OMG I'm at 34 weeks and am ready to evict!
My husband laughs when I tell him that being pregnant is like operating "out of spec." It's just pain pain pain all the time now. Aieee!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Week 34 is about when my spine started going kerblooie. The things that made the biggest difference for me were:
* a chiropractor/acupressurist, in-network with my insurance, who's been seeing me three times a week
* going to the pool twice or three times a week
* Tylenol, every four hours, religiously
* a heating pad for 15 to 30 minutes at least twice a day
* since Week 39, a TENS unit (don't start using this too early!)

In the UK, TENS units are very common for pain management in late pregnancy (Week 37 and beyond) and early labor. If you want one that is designed and tested specifically for labor and delivery, you need to procure one from overseas, since they're not FDA approved and can't be sold and shipped directly to the US (which has more to do with our dysfunctional health care system and the greed of our pharmaceutical companies and anaesthesiologists than it does with the safety of TENS units). You can get TENS units that are approved for postpartum pain management from US manufacturers--you can compare several brands on Amazon and buy them without prescription--but none of those have a safety track record for pregnancy, labor, or delivery anywhere. Buying this little beauty (http://www.babycaretens.com/acatalog/Elle_TENS.html) required that I have the manufacturer ship the device to a friend who lives in the UK, who then mailed it to me. It wasn't all that big an inconvenience, but if I'd put it off until I was far enough along to use the unit, I could easily have put it off until too late altogether. Along with the TENS unit, I bought extra contacts, extra goop for adhering the contacts to my skin, and extra informational booklets on TENS units and pain management, and all of those little extras have been lifesaving over the past week of sciatica. The customer service people at Babycare TENS were very helpful. I just can't say enough good things about them.

Good luck!

[stasiaone.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! Please let me know if you would like to sell your TENS unit following the birth of the little one.

Good luck today!

[red-haired-girl.livejournal.com]

Malibu Gravid Barbie
Would that there were a doll of you...and, don't worry, we'd put in a hinged escape hatch for the lil' guy!

It's gonna be a Halloween birth, I'll bet. If he's got any of his parents' sense of comedic timing.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Actually, the ultrasound I have to do at the hospital to make sure the placenta is still working is scheduled for Halloween. If there's a medical reason to induce labor, that'll be the day we're likeliest to find out about it.

Hinged escape hatches sound pretty good right about now.

[evilbunny.livejournal.com]

You look gorgeous!

*mwah*

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

The picture is beautiful. The last few weeks of pregnancy are no fun but once the due date is officially past it really does just seem endless. I hope you have the birth you are hoping for...SOON. If you can avoid pitocin, definitely avoid it. (I have a totally non-scientific feeling it did not help Andrew and possibly harmed him.)

[puckmls.livejournal.com]

The way you're holding your dress up to your belly/the soon-to-emerge Nubbin reminds me of the woman in van Eyck's "Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife." And yes, you look great!

You may indeed have to rent a hall for the baby greeting. :-)