You can't control when a baby will be born anymore than you can control when a baby is conceived. So relax, chill out, and enjoy some cheesecake and ice tea.
Ahhhh, let's see...where did we leave off?
On October 21, I wrote my last entry in "The Baby Bump" and I was one day away from my greatly anticipated due date. Although I was hanging on to the fleeting hope that I'd have my baby the next day, from the skeptical look on my OB/GYN's face when she examined me two days prior, I knew deep down that going into labor was unlikely.
So in a nutshell, I was p*ssed.
When you go through the emotional, physical, mental, and hormonal changes of a 40 week pregnancy you try REALLY hard to stay positive towards the end.
You end all sentences with "God willing."
You start all sentences with "I pray."
You try your darnest not to make fun of anybody (not midgets, not porn stars, not even reality tv personalities) because you don't want any negativity to seep into your unborn baby's body.
So when my due date had come and gone, and I was officially 40+ weeks pregnant, it seemed like the harder I tried to maintain my "mental feng shui" the more the universe and random mofos tested me.
"Girl, please tell me you are due TODAY!" chuckled the homeless man standing outside of Calypso Cafe.
You no teeth having mutha-*****, I thought.
Surely God was testing my humanity.
"Ma'am are you SURE you aren't having triplets??" The teenage cashier would ask me EVERY time she saw me in Treasure Island grocery store (purchasing cheesecake nonetheless).
"No, sweetie. Just ONE big boy..." I would say as I grit my teeth, smiled and walk away.
It seemed as though the final test of whether I was worthy of being a mother was whether I could make it to labor without cursing somebody out.
Even a well meaning family friend almost got cursed out in a deep, passionate, forehead sweating non-Christian way when she called to "check-in" on me and made mention of:
- how her first child was 4 weeks late, contracted a virus, and almost died,
- how her third child was delivered via c-section and almost died, and how her....
[Well, to be honest that's where I hung up the phone...]
I said a prayer afterwards and hoped that she would forgive me but I had a feeling that Jesus secretly approved of my actions. I was coming down to my last nerve and I had to preserve it for somebody who would be in the labor room with me.
Words can not truly express the level of pure defeat that I felt when I went to the doctor a week and a half after my due date and the doctor meekly said, "yep, your cervix is still hard as a rock....no dilation yet."
All I could think was "W.T.F."
How could I make it through 40+ weeks of pregnancy without any major health issues but my body suddenly couldn't put itself into labor?? This was the one thing that my body was made to do but for whatever reason it couldn't quite get it together.
Deep down, I hoped something wasn't wrong with me or more than that, I hoped nothing was wrong with the baby. But as most women do, I hid my anxiety deep down and put on a brave face for my husband, my parents, our family, and friends because I knew that while I could handle my own anxiety, I couldn't handle the worrying stares that I had began to get when people learned that I hadn't delivered yet.
I had tried almost every natural way to induce labor known to man. I had walked on the treadmill for 3.5 hours, I ate pineapples everyday, I drank red raspberry tea three times a day, had a pre-natal massage, rolled my feet on golf balls, and did jumping jacks when no one was looking. I was too big to have sex so I just would close my eyes and would imagine the "good times" when sex wouldn't give me an asthma attack, a leg cramp, or a backache because I was 40 pounds lighter.
On my next doctor's appointment, the reason behind my child's late arrival was revealed. Roman was measuring at OVER 9 lbs and 8 ounces!!! I felt so bad because I knew that I had been eating a slice of cheesecake a day for the past 3 weeks to make myself feel better but not to make my baby a contestant for "Fat Camp."
After my next (and final) doctor's appointment I went from anxious to petrified.
Just when I had began to wrap my mind around a football coming out of my va-jay-jay it turned out that I had a Mississippi-sized watermelon up in me. Every time I thought of the baby being over 9 pounds I'd come close to tears because I so desperately wanted to have a "natural" labor. [And by natural I mean a highly drugged and "numbed" vaginal delivery...]
So all I could do was wait. Wait for a decision to be made to induce. Wait for a decision to be made to either have a c-section or not. Wait for the next chapter of my life to begin...
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