Barren Mare

Stick a fork in me

...I'm done. Caveat is fully baked at full term as of tomorrow. 40 weeks. And so far...showing no signs of leaving his current warm and cosy accommodation. Night time brings a few random crampings, which amount to nothing other than waking me up briefly.

My last appointment with a GP indicated he is still 3/5 engaged and after groping around my abdomen ("ooh, I think there is an ear"), suggested he is in a "good position", whatever that means.

I also had the flu jab, a bit late in the day but it hadn't been offered before then and I hadn't thought to ask. Perhaps in combination with a nagging, lingering and hacking cold, I found myself feeling utterly wiped out for a few days afterwards, so tired that I might as well as have been rolling boulders up a hill.

 Meanwhile Botany is highly overexcited by Christmas, grasping the concept of the advent calender for the first time and generally careening off the walls with anticipation. Charming to behold but sort of exhausting to encounter. My Christmas present to Knox, meant to be shipped and arrive next day delivery, turned into a week long saga of phone calls to the courier and the company sending it and then to my bank to dispute the transaction followed by more calls to another company to re-order it and today a trip up to town on the bus to collect it from a shop. Walking anywhere feels like I have an anvil in my pelvis.

Ideally, assuming he's not going to put in an appearance before then, I'd like to get through Christmas Day- and then move things along pretty sharpish thereafter. I'm not facing the possibility of an induction until after New Year, which seems impossibly far away as it is. But you know- tick tock, Caveat. Tick tock.

 

38 weeks and...

Counting.

Nothing much is happening, to be honest, on the Caveat front. At my last midwife appointment, he was apparently not completely back to back (good) and the head is 3/5 engaged. I could kind of tell s to the latter, given the persistant ache in my lower back and the sense of a cannonball pressing against my nether regions. But maybe he's popped back up again, since the bump doesn't look much lower to me, the need to waddle has lessened slightly and the scalding volcano of heartburn every night remains just as active. Occasionally I have something which I think may be Braxton Hicks action- or then again, not so much.

For added amusement, I've also developed a hacking cough/cold, which I am fighting to keep at bay with steam and vast quantities of oranges but really could do without at this stage.

I am, all things considered, extremely uncomfortable.

So the days go by, filled quite comprehensively by Christmas shopping and wrapping, sorting out a long overdue service of the boiler, Botany's nursery Christmas parties, my office Christmas lunch. Did I mention we seem to be in the run up to Christmas? Hmm, yes. It's proving hard to pull the shutters down and retreat into the hibernation of prebirth with all this going on- but on the upside it makes the days go a bit faster. And I am finding it a relief to have reached December at last. Every day there is a new window to open on the advent calendar and we are one day closer to the wretched discomfort of the third trimester ending. Everyone is suddenly counting down and alight with anticipation- albeit with a slightly different aim.