Laborious, but not labor

Last week, I saw the wife of my husband/wife OB team. She said that I didn't look uncomfortable enough to be close to labor. Well, as Homestead Mama arrived home tonight to me in tears (again) I'm starting to think that maybe she was right but I'm now on the right track.

By the time morning came, Monita had settled down, as had my contractions. Shockingly, the car made it the short distance to daycare & I dropped Pequita off for the day. Hottie Friend came over and kept me company until noonish chatting, dishing and generally keeping my mind off my discomfort and my lack of labor. Homestead Mama came home early shortly after Hottie Friend left, and spent the afternoon doing the most valuable thing she could possibly do - fixing our riding lawn mower. I ordered her parts from the internet, and she made it run again. Despite the generous help w/ patch mowing and weed whacking from our dear neighbor, much of our ~1.5 acre lawn had fallen into disrepute due to lack of mowing. We have (and I'm being generous here) a kind of scruffy version of a wild garden - very lush, lots of perennial flowers, etc. If we keep the grass mowed, it looks charmingly overgrown even if we don't make time for much weeding/tending. However, when the grass is knee-high due to equipment failure, we look just plain scruffy. It now looks lovely. Sighs of relief all around. I awoke from a nap to the tidy newly cut lawn, and it was a treat.

We picked up Pequita from daycare and I tended her while Homestead Mama kept working outside. She had a fever of 102.6 when I got her home, so I dosed her with Tylenol and kept her quiet and hydrated. Homestead Mama had a double header softball night, so I was ready to hand the still awake Pequita over to her upon her arrival home. The contractions which eased greatly during the day had returned around 8pm, and I was really uncomfortable again. Pequita isn't so sick that she isn't in fairly good spirits but she doesn't want to be set down. It is impossible to comfortably carry around and care for a 21 lb eight-month old when I am actively contracting and being pummeled from the inside out by a fetus ready for the world. Bad, bad, bad. I was happy enough to see Homestead Mama appear at 10:15pm, but quite overjoyed to see her bearing hot Chinese food, something I mentioned that I'd been craving lately. I had a few sliced of Cheddar in my hand which was going to stand in for my dinner until I saw her. I burst into happy relieved tears and tossed the baby to her while I dove for a plate. She sweetly noted that since I am in end-stage pregnancy, I should get whatever I want to eat. See why I love her?

So Monito is roiling and punching and thrashing around inside me, causing me to feel as though my abdominal muscles are bruised (and well they might be.) I am back to contracting several painful, long times per hour. My lower back is quite sore, and I have waves of nausea. YOU tell ME - am I in labor? Who the fuck knows. I do know that I'll be less jovial and affable at the OB appointment tomorrow morning than I have in weeks past. I may even demand that he check me again to give me an idea of how much longer I have. A few days, fine. Another 3 weeks? I'll need a LOT more ice cream in the house to make it through. I plan to mow the lawn again tomorrow - it could use the mulching & lower cut, and I think the two hours on a vibrating tractor will only help everything along.

(And the bags are partially packed. I'm going to get them both ready to go tomorrow, and print up the birth plan for the OB appointment first thing in the morning.)

Here's hoping that I sleep a bit tonight. I'm not holding my breath.