The Final Countdown (?)

Hmmm. Looks like I may have been a Tuesday off ...

Hm? What? More details? Oh, okay.

The morning got off to a fairly normal start. Miss M crawled into our bed at about 7am, dozed for a few minutes and then started kicking me in the back to indicate she wanted breakfast. The Admiral slept on, Cha Cha was comfortably tucked into her new futon and Pops had caught a 5am cab to the airport, so M and I were the only ones up. I got her ready and off to school, then swung by the store to pick up mail and receipts.

By the time I got home, I started noticing that the contractions I'd pretty much stopped expecting to be any sort of consistent were actually sort of consistent. I kept a lid on it, though, and watched the clock as I went about my morning chores - checking email, checking blogs, checking email again. After about two hours, I mentioned to The Admiral that I thought I might be having a baby today. After a few other cyber-announcements and a couple more contractions, I broke the news to Cha Cha, too.

That set off a flurry of puttering involving bathroom cleaning and laundry, none of which involved me. I did whip out the vacuum, though, figuring I might be spending some time on the floor in the near future. A few more cyber-updates and about three contractions later, I decided I should maybe let the midwives know what was going on. Andrea seemed very unsurprised to hear from me. "I was expecting a call when this weather came in," she said. I guess barometric pressure has something to do with babies coming. We discussed my status for a few minutes and casually agreed that we'd check back in later when there was more going on.

In an effort to help that happen, I had a sandwich (egg salad, my labor favorite) and juice, went for a semi-vigorous walk and took a long shower. I started singing in the shower - something I rarely do, but I remembered a passage from Ina May's book talking about how that could help open things up. I just kept repeating this lullaby from Miss M's hippie earth-music CD, over and over and over again. I don't know if it helped open anything, but it was very soothing.

After I got out, Melissa called from the store with a diaper question, and I couldn't resist letting her know what was happening. (I think both she and the customer she was helping felt bad for interrupting, but really, I just wanted to share the excitement.) Not knowing when I'd have a chance to do it again, I put on a little make-up and did my hair, and then returned to my post on the couch where I ... well, where I am right now. Contractions still coming, but no more intense. I think I'm a little bit anxious about Miss M coming home from school, but I may just send her and the other adults out to the park for awhile. I spent the first twelve hours of my last labor totally alone, and I think some quiet time would be helpful.