As the due date nears, intermittent contractions seem to be increasing. Things seemed to come a little further toward fruition yesterday when, while dancing at a local friend’s wedding, I started making faces at T. He kept telling me to slow down! No! I was thinking – first of all, I am slowing down and second of all, my body is telling me what to do! But he is not without reason. Apparently words hang much more heavily when you’re almost 39 weeks pregnant.
The other day, I was pushing some random numbers on the cell phone and ended up dialing Tanuj. “It was an accident,” I told him as he answered.
Panic-stricken, I heard on the other line, “What happened? What was an accident? Did your water break? Did you get into a car accident?”
“No, no, dialing you was an accident. I didn’t mean to call you.”
Sighs of exasperation and relief followed. “R, be careful of what you tell me! I thought you had gotten into an accident or that you were in labor or something serious happened.”
“No, no, don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”
Worry? Worry??!! He’s now been sharing the story around town. Be-bopping and skeet-skatting the story around town (that was for you, T). And I’m the crazy one. But I guess one has to be careful about what one says and does because all the facial expressions, the seemingly meaningless lines said so casually, carry much greater meaning when mentioned at a tense time for parties who cannot possibly know what’s going on inside my brain and body without hearing the verbal cues.
It definitely makes me laugh, and I realize I now have to be as calm as possible, stop and think, say my peace as I need to, but just be cognizant of everyone else – at least for now, while my inhibitions and mental status still remain. When I’m in fits of labor pain I’m sure that I can be a little freer in my speech! 🙂
But lest I completely avoid the topic of initial conversation, I better go on. So yes, we started with some intermittent – every 10 minute – contractions while I was dancing at the wedding, so at about 9:30 I figured it was probably time to head home, so we drove and I’d quietly mention if I thought I was contracting and T would time. It’s nothing to speak of at this point, but it was amazing how quickly this very short course of events set the man into gear. As soon as I got home and was brushing my teeth, turning on the hypnotherapy music and crawling into bed, T was on the phone with the doula and with the midwife, giving them the heads up in case something crazy was to happen in the middle of the night. T packed his bag and set to work on the condo – arranging toiletries in the bathroom, cleaning up random papers, putting away boxes we’ve been meaning to store for months. I should have contractions more often! 🙂
I think it’s safe to say that at least for the moment I’m not going to be heading into the birth center, and it’s also safe to say that like us, baby G knows that his time in the womb will soon be coming to a close!
