We are closer!!
Yes! I went to the doctor and finally, FINALLY, all the contractions I have been having are starting to do thier job. I am starting to dialate. I am effacing. I am going to have a baby! Soon!! Maybe even by the due date!!! Stuff is happening!!
YAY!
Hungry now, must go eat. Again.
Nick’s memorial was Saturday, and I was feeling sad most of the day, though Lee and I played on the computer and did some necessary consumer therapy to try and alleviate the worst of the blues. Sunday morning while I was posting my last blog entry, I began to work on the playlist I want to have in the delivery room. I opened my I-Tunes and began to add songs to the list.
I especially wanted a few that Nick and I had listened to, I wanted him there in spirit while Otter was being born. About a year ago, Nick had given me a copy of Poe’s CD, Haunted. Monkey and I both loved it, and have listened to it more often than anything else ever since. We have played the CD several times a week. It is always in my car and more than likely the CD we are playing. I could have sworn to you that I knew every single song, forwards and backwards, which is what gave me pause when I opened the song list and saw a song title I didn’t recognize.
Hmmm? If You Were Here.
I put on head phones and began to listen to it.
Child’s whisper: I miss you
If you were here,
I know that you would truly be amazed at what’s become of what you made,
If you were here,
you would know how I treasured every day,
how every single word you spoke echoes in me like a memory of hope.
When you were here,
you could not feel the value that I placed,
on every look that crossed your face,
When you were here,
I did not know just how I had embraced
all that you hid behind your face
could not hide from me cause it hid in me too.
Now that I’m here I hear you,
and wonder if maybe you can hear yourself ringing in me,
Now that you’re somewhere else.
Cause I hear your strange music gentle and true,
singing inside me with the best parts of you.
Now that I’m here,
I hope somewhere you hear them too.
Now that I’m here.
I love you.
Child’s whisper: It’s okay, you can go now.
My breath caught, here, on the CD Nick had given me, was this amazing song expressing so much of what I was feeling about his death, so much of what I have been wishing I could tell him. I turned to Lee and told him he had to listen to it. I played it for him and we both just sat there. Amazed.
It really is just like Nick. If he had known what was going to happen, he absolutely would have created a CD for us to mourn him with, some music we could find solace and comfort in. I feel as though he sent me a message, and I feel blessed to have been able to recieve it. I plan on hearing his voice speaking within me for the rest of my life.
The final weeks of pregnancy are doing something strange to my mind. I am so completely ready to have this baby. I have had visions of bouncing up and down on a pogo stick, going jeeping on off country roads (bouncy ones), and doing just about anything else you can think of to have this kiddo NOW!! (Okay, not anything, but anything healthy and natural.)
Of course, as a serious type A personality and a proponent of natural childbirth, I have been reading several different books on the biology of birth and the history of birth. I have learned that many of the medical techniques used by doctors for the past several hundred years were started not because they were the best thing for the woman or baby, but because they were best for someone else. (Color me unsurprised) The result of all this education? I have come to see my husband as a potential source of labor induction.
Bring on those prostaglandins baby!! (Note: This is not an effective pick up line, though it did make him laugh.)
All joking aside, despite our culture’s reservations about tying anything sexual to the process of birth, women who enjoy an active sex life during pregnancy are more likely to birth close to their due date, instead of going over. (My due date is soon… please god may I birth close to my due date.) This is in part due to the oxytocin released by nipple stimulation, which helps encourage labor, and is also in part due to the introduction of prostaglandins from the semen, which help the cervix soften and efface. Human semen is the most concentrated source of prostaglandins, which is the labor inducing substance synthetically reproduced in Cytotec. However, unlike Cytotec, Human prostaglandins do not contribute to hyperstimulation of the uterus, hemorraging, and at times, death. (Now that’s fun!)
Oh honey… -eyebrow wiggle- What’s a handsome prostaglandin producing man like you doing in a place like this?
Yes, even the largest, most pregnant woman in the world (today that would be me) can drum up a semblance of sexual desire, if it means her term of months may come to an end sooner rather than later. Of course, there are other benefits to natural labor induction, such as sex, so it’s not as though it is a trivail to try this natural method of birth encouragement. After all, it’s what got us here in the first place isn’t it?
Hmmm…. sex AND natural labor induction without the risk of pain or death?? What a quaint notion. Hey honey… let’s go light some candles.
SavvySpoons 