Jenny Ford, founder of Monkey-Toes.com - Week 39
Week 39 –
YES! I’m still here…and STILL pregnant. At this point, my best friends – Giselle Bundchen, Kendra Wilkinson, Kourtney Kardashian have all had their babies. They are basking in the glorious glow of new motherhood. Yay for them (I’m kinda sour and sarcastic right now). All of them had due dates AFTER mine. It’s like being the last one to be served cake at a birthday party. Your mouth is watering, you’ve starved yourself all day for that one (ok, this is me we’re talking about, probably 2 or 3) piece of cake and you’re hoping it’s a corner with a HUGE frosting flower on it. Then you watch, salivating, as everyone else get’s their piece before you and good-naturedly smile as they enjoy it. And you sit back and wait…patiently.
As I write this my due date is a mere 3 days away. When I found out I was pregnant I assumed (ass = U + Me) I’d have the baby early. Like 37-38ish weeks. Why don’t we ever believe that it could potentially happen on the due date or shortly thereafter? People from all over the place are coming out of the woodworks saying they had their baby 1 day to 2 weeks after the due date – oh my. My mom, in fact, went 10 days past with me and 19 days (YES – NINETEEN) days past with my brother before they finally induced her poor little body – are we lacking that “it’s time to go into labor gene”? And don’t get me wrong, I am completely thankful to be carrying a healthy baby boy and to be healthy myself.
Rose and Ella walked into our house on Monday after school, after the weekend with their dad, and all I get is a snarl from Rose. Apparently, greeting her with my ginormous belly is completely inappropriate at this point - she wants her new brother to greet her. Rose has been having a lot of “talkin-to’s” with him about coming out now. She wakes up in the morning disappointed to see me – wanting to wake up to Grammy being at our house. She goes to bed saying to my belly “you’d better come out tonight!”. I’m feeling so loved these days… No, I completely understand how exciting this must be for the girls. I don’t blame them at all.
This past week has brought on some intense insomnia. I don’t think I have ever been more productive in my life. I’ve had a few nights where I wake up around 1 am, usually with a contraction, and lay there for an hour before I decide I am not going to be able to snooze again, so I get up and work. One morning I worked until Tim woke up to go to work – about 6ish. I made him breakfast, saw him off to work and then went to bed. That day I felt hung-over (minus the fun night of binge drinking) the next day. I even justified a cheeseburger and fries from Wendy’s. Why does that happen? I had the insomnia with my girls and I have talked to many pregnant women that are going through it too. This is supposed to be the time when you are trying to hoard sleep, not lose it.
I will have you know that some relief is in sight – it’s the light at the end of the tunnel – that “tunnel” is the birth canal and the light is for our son to follow out. I had a Dr appointment this week and am still dilated to 1 cm, though my cervix is now soft-er than last week. Not too much progress, but like the Doc said, it really doesn’t matter where you are. You could be at 4 cm and not be in labor or at 1 cm and go into labor at any time. But it did lead us to our next topic – induction. Obviously I would rather go into labor naturally – it’s been my goal all along to keep my blood pressure down enough to not develop toxemia, in which I did a darn good job of *patting myself on the back*. But who could’ve predicted this? So after a lengthy discussion about the pro’s and con’s of it all I decided that on December 23 at 6 am I will be induced – ya, you read that right, the day before Christmas eve. Because this date is just over a week away obviously anything could happen in the meantime, and we are still hoping and praying that I do go into labor on my own. The Dr has said that if everything goes smoothly I will be home for Christmas eve. Can you even imagine the chaos that is running through my head right now? I have to admit, it does relieve my mind a little to now have a “date” and anything else that happens before that said “date” will just be icing - on my piece, or two, of “cake”.
We love this photo of Jenny. We feel like we should be playing the song "Isn't she lovely" by Stevie Wonder!! She looks so happy, healthy and beautiful. That baby is ready to pop!