final thoughts on pregnancy...

so in case you're not up to date on facebook, tomorrow morning i have an appointment booked to be induced at 7:30am. i'm supposed to call at 6:30am and see if they have room for me because if not, they'll tell me to call back later. i'm crossing my fingers for no one else to be having babies tomorrow morning. :) then i go in and my doctor uses some kind of gel (is this too much info?) and i sit around for awhile and if it doesn't kick me into labour, i go get lunch then come back and we do it all again. this can happen a few times. if it doesn't happen, next is breaking my water and then, if still nothing, i go on an IV. so while i think i'm having this baby tomorrow, it sounds like there are a lot of factors (the main one being they don't have room for me tomorrow) so i shouldn't be getting too too set on it.

but how can i not? i have been pregnant now for 41 weeks and 3 days. that's 290 days of pregnancy. to reminisce a little is to be expected, is it not?

when i took my first pregnancy test, i didn't really read the instructions very carefully. i didn't use it in the morning, as suggested, and i didn't pee on the stick for the whole 5 seconds...maybe just 1 second. and the result was that i was not pregnant. fine with me as it would have meant i'd be due in june when school wouldn't be finished yet. a couple weeks later when i told my friend kara this story, she looked at me as though i was crazy and said, "umm, maybe you should do another test." that was october 10th. i thought, "yeah, maybe." but didn't. it was the weekend of matt's wedding, family was out from ontario, it was a busy weekend. that night, at the rehearsal dinner, my aunt carolyn asked me if there was anything that i wanted to tell them this weekend...implying pregnancy. i innocently said, "nope. not pregnant." but the next morning, the morning of matt's wedding, i got up at 8am, peed on the 2nd stick in my two pack of pregnancy tests and it was positive. i climbed back into bed with tim and said, "so i'm pregnant." since i hadn't even told him that i was taking the test, he was shocked and then we were giddy. we kept it a secret all day and enjoyed the wedding with the secret we had.

i'd have to say my feelings on being pregnant after the initial surprise were mostly apprehension. we felt unbelievably blessed and humbled that getting pregnant had not been difficult for us as it can be for so many couples. but now we were really pregnant and the idea of giving birth was horrifying. breastfeeding still makes me nervous. just having a baby around sounded like i was going to be giving up a lot of freedom. yes, we wanted to be pregnant and had prayed and hoped for it to happen but now that it was here, it was overwhelming. i was super forgetful, emotional, and very exhausted. i gained excessive weight in the first few months and while i was very glad to be "showing", there was a steady stream of commentary from friends and colleagues and strangers in line at the grocery store on how huge i was. but all in stride. second trimester, my energy came back and i felt back to "normal". in january and february, i still jogged around in p.e. class and played soccer at recess. i went to step class every monday night and kept up and usually took a dance class on wednesdays. and then one day in late february, i played a little soccer and afterwards, i could barely walk. all my joints were unbelievably sore. i realized that it was time to start slowing down a little. this was a difficult part of pregnancy for me - the feeling of laziness...forced laziness. i have to say, with all the feelings of nervousness and the diminishing ability to do day to day things, i ashamedly didn't have the best attitude about being pregnant in my second trimester. i wasn't a pregnancy fan. and where was this great skin i'd heard about anyways?

but one night, this growing baby stopped fluttering around and started moving. long periods of slower movements sliding across my insides. i cried. it felt terrible. but i started to get used to it. and even though i was getting bigger and bigger, i felt more aware of this being a baby and not just "weight". when i got to the date where the baby, if it came now, could survive, i was so happy. i saw great examples in some of our friends of how great a baby was and how they could still do lots of things that i thought i'd be giving up when this little guy came. and i finally "got used" to being pregnant. it wasn't so bad - i was making a baby. it helped to have quite possibly the most supportive husband ever who encouraged me everyday. i don't think i could be a husband to a pregnant woman - that is a whole other journey.

and now, 290 days later, we're ready. haha. i guess that word, ready, should be in quotation marks but i was . but God had it right when he made the gestation period 40 or so weeks because you need that long to get your mind wrapped around what's going to happen. my brother asked me today (on the phone as he's in arkansas for fire academy until july) if knowing that i'm going in tomorrow is scarier than it just happening randomly but as of 11:18pm the night before? i'm still feeling like, "sure, i can do this." here we go!