37.5 Weeks

I have been procrastinating writing this post and I am not entirely sure why. I've had a lot of downtime at work over the last week as many of my tasks are getting tied up and I keep thinking "okay TODAY, today sit down and write and capture what's going on at this moment." And every day I've found an abundance of other ways to whittle the day away, so much so that my 36 week update became a 37.5 week update.  Oops!

I think this post would sound entirely different on any given day that I would have written it over the last couple weeks. There are some days when it probably have just veered off into a litany of complaints and full fledged final-month-of-pregnant whining. In fact, I did have one post like that finished at the very start of my 36th week after a particularly miserable week and then my internet went out and I couldn't publish it. Probably a good thing. Not that I want to wear only rose colored glasses and pretend everything about pregnancy is just la, la, la the best thing ever but I also don't want to look back at my final weeks and only remember the parts where I was uncomfortable, aching, hot, cranky or ungrateful.

Truthfully, there are plenty of those moments lately. I don't think many people get to full term without feeling a bit crotchety. There are moments when all I want to do is sleep on my stomach, have a glass of wine, paint my toenails, or roll over without having to grab the duvet first to anchor myself and swing myself up and over, body pillow in tow, to the other side like a beached whale.

But those moments certainly don’t encapsulate every bit of this final stage. I am pretty aware of the good fortune I've had that the majority of my pregnancy – certainly the first 35 weeks - were very, very easy and that I've been very healthy. I'm still going to dance trance or walking regularly, and truthfully, I feel better doing those activities than I do sitting in my awful desk chair for 10 hours a day at work. (In my mind's eye, I will be tossing that thinly upholstered piece of cardboard with wheels into a virtual bonfire in my head the day I walk out of that office. We were not friends pre-pregnancy, and we are certainly not friends now. And yes, I have a yoga ball that I also sit on although wouldn't you know that's actually against office policy? So far, the powers that be have been kind enough to turn a blind eye to my transgression in office furniture.)

Anyways! Somewhere among all my preggo-insomnia induced complaints is the knowledge that this chapter, my first pregnancy, is getting ready to reach it's dénouement. But I have no idea what this means. You know in the Twilight series how Alice can see into the future, but then once Bella gets pregnant with Renesmee, she can no longer see her future because the little fetus is blocking Alice's powers? I sort of feel like that. Not that I could ever see into my future a la Alice but I always have been a big visualizer and whenever I have a Big Next Step in my life, I usually spend months picturing what it might be like. (And yes, I believe that visualizing it in a positive way can help shape that event to go more positively. I'm a hippie dippie life coach, what can I say.) Even though I know that what pans out will usually be completely different than what I pictured, visualizing helps me stay calm, or excited, or focused before the Big Next Step gets here.  I've always taken this ability to visualize my next steps for granted and used it a way to prepare myself - mentally and emotionally - for what's to come.  But right now, picturing whatever comes next - everything from going into labor, to meeting my son, to bringing him home... I draw a blank. A total blank.

All I know about what’s to come is that I have no idea about what’s to come. And I don't really feel particularly stressed about the unknown. I think perhaps because I know that I just have absolutely no control over the majority of what's to unfold, that I've given into that. I just feel a little bit... detached. Floating. Waiting. Wondering if my whole life will change tomorrow, or will it be another month? It’s possibly the strangest emotion I’ve felt so far in my life – this feeling of acceptance, detachment and expectation all rolled in to one.

So maybe that’s why it’s easier to just complain that my back hurts and my feet are swollen….