Inconceivable!

Well, 4 more weeks, people. The ultrasound said that 4 weeks from today would be my due date. As I've told some of you, the teachers at school are convinced that, due to my size (which I think is quite average), there is absolutely no possible way that I will still have a child in me in 4 weeks. I better have my bag packed and the car seat in the car THIS MINUTE, because apparently the baby is now big enough to just crawl right out of me if she so chooses. In fact, they've requested that I make a list of who gets to take me to the hospital when (it's a done deal) I go into labor at school. Among the recent comments that I routinely get are, "How long do you have left? 5 weeks?!! Every time I look at you I'm amazed!" "You're still here? You're getting pretty big there." "(The song) She's a brick.....house....." "You've really grown in the last month. 5 more weeks?! You'll maybe go early." Do people hear themselves say these things? Has it really been that long since they've seen an average weight, tall-ish pregnant woman? I'd say that 85% of the teachers in my school are petite, 105 pounds, 5'2 (if they're lucky) women who wouldn't be able to carry a baby full term unless it was only 6 pounds at maximum birth weight. I think that's what my baby weighs now. With 4 weeks to go.

For a while I got all kinds of stories about how early they went and the appropriate advice to be prepared-"I went 3 weeks early-I went 6 weeks early-You better be prepared-You're going early-Is your bag packed?" And on and on. Those have mostly stopped. But NOW, I'm starting to get the stories of people that they know who had 10 pound babies! Babies that were so big that they had to be taken by Cesarean because it was impossible for them to be delivered naturally. Or people who were so past their due date that labor had to be induced and then it turned out that the baby was too big and, after hours of labor, had to be taken Cesarean anyway. When did that shift happen? We started with stories of small, tiny babies who had to be delivered early and went directly into stories about infants who can roll over and lift their heads up on the operating table of the hospital. Comforting, really.

I'm down to weekly appointments now, so they check every time to see if anything is happening or progressing. I'll spare the details, but suffice it to say that nobody is going anywhere yet. So everyone can just zip their lips. However, I am measuring big, which means that the measurement in centimeters of my uterus is a bigger number than my weeks of pregnancy. These numbers usually correspond pretty closely. I was at 35 weeks, and I measured at 38 1/2 centimeters, so that's a bit of a discrepancy. My doctor said that if I keep measuring big at 37 or 38 weeks, they'll do an ultrasound to check on baby's weight. And then we might be revisiting this whole "going early" issue. But for now, I'm perfectly stubborn in my claim of 4 weeks. I suppose I'm as mentally ready as I'm going to be, so whatever fears I might have are either going to be realized or brought to naught in short order, no matter when I deliver. There's no sense in dwelling on that, I guess. It'll happen when it'll happen, when and how Baby decides it will happen. I suppose I had better get to it, but as we speak my bag is not packed, the car seat is not in the car, and my sub plans are not finished. I'm living on the edge, folks!