Pregnancy Journal

Well, it's official.  The estimated due date has come and gone.  As nervous as I am about giving birth, I had really hoped baby would be one of those in the 5% to be right on schedule.  Today was my Grandma's birthday and it would have been very cool for baby to share a birthday with her.  That, and they would both have been Wednesday's children...except Grandma was born 84 years ago.

In any case, I know it's still only a matter of a few days before I celebrate baby's birthday.  I'm so excited!  I teeter between anxiety and excitement constantly, but try to keep busy as much as I can since I'm getting a little stir crazy just sitting around waiting for baby to arrive (almost literally).  I really hope baby decides it's time to make his or her grand entrance sometime between now and Monday night, as I would so prefer to be back at home by the time my mom gets into town, rather than in the hospital for our first 2 days together in almost a year.  That, and sooner or later, one of my cats is going to assume that the big empty bed in my room actually is for them, so baby better hurry up!

I had to erase all my previous entries for reasons I won't get into now, but I can't help posting just this one.  I am so nervous!  Everyone, especially those who have kids already, tell me not to worry and that everything will be fine, and, not as bad as I'm imagining.  But, just like watching a horror movie, my imagination runs away with me and I'm doing a phenomenal job of scaring myself utterly silly, except in this case it's about the whole delivery and postpartum experience.  I don't know what to expect and so I assume the worst because I'd be very naive to think it's going to be an easy or painless thing to give birth.  On the other hand, I'm even more anxious because I can't wait to meet this little person who's been living with me for almost 9 months. The crib's all set up, the clothes are almost all washed and waiting to be worn...and yet, I still haven't packed a bag to take to the hospital. Most of the time, I'm more excited than anything else, but sometimes (like now) I'm pretty much terrified...about what delivery will be like, or healing from said delivery, and about how I'll handle being a mom.

I'm still working, which is in part an effort to stay as active as I can because I don't want to just sit around waiting for the baby to arrive.  But at the same time, it temporarily offers me a distraction from the complete anxiety I've been feeling.  (Instead of stressing about childbirth I can stress over those tables that either don't realize or don't care that their inadequate tip does little to nothing for my livelihood.)  At the same time, I've been getting so physically exhausted that I just want to take leave.  Sadly, my vision of any leave I might take before the baby is born entails me sitting around worrying about all the things I've already confessed to worrying about.

I just need to calm down; only I'm not sure how to do that.  I'm sure a lot of new mothers-to-be go through something like this (though I am a self-professed worry-wort, so maybe not to this degree).  I just wish I had some idea of how to relax and stay focused on how excited I am to meet my child.