Post Due Date?

It is just a guesstimate after all.  Give or take two weeks...it's all good.  However, staring at a pot of water and waiting for it to boil seems like an eternity.  Especially, when you have an audience.  Yes.  I am still pregnant.  And thank you to everyone for sending positive vibes, baby-purging vibes, prayers, and well-wishes.  I'm certain it all helps.  Nonetheless, babies come on their own terms, so I have learned.  They also come when they are in the best position to do so making sure baby and mother have a safe and desirable labor and delivery process.

This past Friday, I saw my little babe snuggled comfortably in my uterus on the ultrasound monitor.  But this babe's head was cocked to try and see where it needed to go.  Not the ideal birthing position.  This would be considered posterior with a forehead presentation, even though it's body was more in an anterior presentation.  Ok, on to spinningbabies.com. 

I have been a rotisserie chicken since Friday.  Rolling from side to side, crawling around my home with my butt in the air, and doing more pelvic tilts than I have done throughout my entire life.  I think it is helping.  I do not feel an uncomfortable pressure pushing down on my pubic symphysis anymore. And a back and body contour along my ever-growing belly is fully palpable.  Nonetheless, fear, stress, negativity, and distraction can reverse it all in a heart beat.  My midwife said something that I will never forget.  "Trust that your body and your baby know what to do.  Because they do."  Having a medical background, I am aware of the complications of labor and delivery and undesirable position of a fetus during the labor process.  But how many complications are willed into presence by fear and potential unnecessary intervention?  Who knows?  But always best to be safe.  And for my current situation, I feel it is safest to remain positive, listen to my body, trust my body and my baby, and ride out this week.  According to my official due date, which was September 10, I have plenty of time for labor to occur naturally and safely before going into panic mode and that is what I will do.  And I encourage others to do the same when safe and appropriate.  (I do know mothers who have lost their babies in the womb or had close calls with nuchal cords, including myself.  All unbearable.)

It has not been easy.  While I am grateful for everyone's kindness, help, and prayers, I feel very much under a microscope.  Phone calls, texts, questions, check-ins, and "if-I-knew-you'd-be-late"s are wearing me thin.  Yup.  I have been contracting since week 30 and everyone that knows me was expecting an early labor.  Including myself.  This baby has a sense of humor...and to quote my husband's cousin, "it is cozy in there and putting up curtains."  I feel good.  I feel heavy.  I pee myself still.  I am happy.  I am irritated.  I am stressed.  I am calm.  I am still pregnant.  This is out third baby.  And from the beginning, we were told that the third is a wild card!

Sorry honey, I couldn't tell you to take a much needed vacation instead of waiting for a paternity leave.  Sorry family for coming to help and now being away from your own lives for weeks.  I appreciate your understanding and compassion at times.  But I cannot be sorry for choosing to have a natural birth that I view to be a beautiful and sacred event.  I refuse to choose "convenience" to please anyone.  I do not expect your sacrifices but I am grateful for them.  Please know that I can do this and if and when you need to go back to your own status quo, I AM OK WITH THAT! XOXOXO

Much love to you all and especially to all those pregnant ;)
Be Well,
MLC