The Beginning of the End

Early Sunday morning at 2 a.m., I woke up and couldn't breathe.

The contraction had grabbed me so tight it took my breath away.

"Whoa!" I thought.

Actually, I said it out loud.

"Whoa!"

I got up and headed for the bathroom.  Since I got pregnant this time, I have woken up between 2 and 4 a.m. every night.  And since late in my second trimester, I always have to pee then, too.

I've stopped caring, honestly.  I just get up, pee, and then try and make the hour or two it takes me to fall back asleep fly by as quickly as possible, often by turning on Nick at Nite or reading something mindless on the iPad.

But this time, I couldn't lay down.

I was really uncomfortable back in the bed.  So uncomfortable I wanted to jump up and ground myself on the solid, hard floor, rocking on my hands or knees.  Or something.

My abdomen kept getting squeezed by contractions.  And I felt them in my back, too.  And my tailbone. 

I had forgotten about my tailbone labor aches with Ella, but now, they all came roaring back, scaring me a little.

I flipped and flopped, trying to make the discomfort go away.

I wasn't in pain, but I didn't feel good.  And I was getting anxious.  Like I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

Plus, I was nauseous.

"Uh-oh," I thought.

Actually, I said it out loud.

"Uh-oh!"

I puked quite a bit while in labor with Ella.  That, and I felt the constant urge to, um, poop.  Except there was nothing there.  It was the baby, pressing on my intestines as she descended.  The urge didn't go away until she was born.

And this time?  Yep.  I felt the urge to poop.  A lot.

I kept going back to the bathroom.  But I couldn't.  Just like with Ella, there was nothing there.

"Oh, no," I thought.

Actually, I said it out loud.

"Oh, no!"

And then I began an hour-long dance from bed, tossing and turning, to the bathroom, where I was bent over and unsure what to do.

Every time I returned to my pillows, I gazed at the hubs.

"Do I wake him?" I thought.

Actually, I said it out loud.

"Babe, I'm having contractions."

But he's a deep sleeper, and I didn't try very hard.  Mostly because I was afraid that if I did, it would make it a reality.

And it was not time for labor to be a reality quite yet.

You see, I have to make it six more days.

Six more days, and I can deliver my baby out of a hospital.  At our birth center.  I'll be considered full-term at 37 weeks.

It's conservative, thanks to my wonky, hard-to-predict due date.  But for the last month, I've known.  The midwife told me, "Keep her in till February.  Then she's good to go."  We've been joking that I need to watch the Super Bowl pregnant, and then I am good to go.

And, so, I was scared.

I'd had two hours of this.  Two hours of aches and contractions and pelvic pressure and pinching, plus a pretty strong urge to empty my guts.

So, I was left no choice.

I got up, and I started pacing.

I guzzled water and sat and rocked in our rocking chair and breathed.  Then I paced some more.

And I talked. And talked and talked and talked. To the baby.  And not just in my head.

This, too, I actually said out loud.

"You cannot come out yet.  Soon, but not now.  You have to calm down.  You have to rest.  We aren't quite ready for you.  You need just another week to grow.  It's not time yet.  You cannot come out right now."

I kept repeating it, over and over, swaying on my legs in the middle of the play-room, across the house so I didn't wake Ella or the hubs.

I didn't even feel silly doing it.

I just felt desperate.

And, after two hours of all manner of fetal lecturing, she listened. She finally listened, thank God.

I curled up in my bed and fell asleep, no longer awakened by the tightening of my uterus anymore, which had died down back into it's normal Braxton-Hicks range.

Two more hours later, after my poor husband got up with Ella, who was stirring as I was finally settling down at her normal 6 a.m., I got back up and waddled out to the site of my previous lecture to my unborn child.

I grabbed my cup of midwife-prescribed red raspberry leaf tea and sat down in the rocker, more exhausted than when I'd gone to bed the night before.

"I think I just talked myself out of full-blown labor," I thought.

Actually, I said it out loud.  To my husband.

"Last night, it took me four hours to talk my body out of going into labor."

He just stared at me.

I think he knew I was scared.

While I am so done being pregnant, I cannot have a baby this week.

If my middle-of-the-night stubborn-ness is any indication, I will not.

Or, I hope I will not.

And, yet, I battle with the fear that my little uterine lectures will be so effective, this baby will come out late. I keep prepping for that, but I definitely don't want to be pregnant for that much longer.

I just keep getting more tired and more uncomfortable and more worried that, when the time comes, after months of sleepless nights, I will be too pooped for labor.

It's a war in there.

But, it really isn't much longer now.

It's the beginning of the end.