40 + 3

Apparently I am the type of pregnant woman whose gestation period is longer than average, and also one who gains more weight than average. Last time I stepped on the scale (three days ago), I had officially amassed 50 pounds of weight I don't normally carry. My "due date" has come and gone, and those things are dumb, but am I ever going to go into labor on my own? I didn't before and worry my body will need prodding again. I was hoping this pregnancy would be different, and overall it has been, but this end part . . . man!

Tim has been off work this week, though, and that makes the days feel a little more tolerable. I am still in tears on a daily basis, but it helps to have someone here to fill in my slack. We were hoping he'd be here to help with the postpartum adjustment and recovery period, but it might turn out that his break from work will include more waiting than adjusting. We will see. But it is nice to have him here now. I am sort of at a point where I feel like I need more help now than I will adjusting to the new reality of having two kids, but that's probably a silly thing to think. I will probably feel extremely limited and inadequate and incapable once the baby actually arrives. I have gotten a few comments like, "The baby is easier to take care of on the inside than the outside." But Tim counters that kind of saying with, "Once the baby is on the outside, you can put them down once in a while." Hopefully the challenges presented by the adjustment to another little life in my care will be exhausting in a different way. I'm done feeling impatient or anxious or unprepared--I have lost all sense of having any control--and I am just trying to find ways to distract myself: physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Despite feeling like I'm revisiting an identical purgatory to the one I was in during the final stages of my previous pregnancy, I am confident this labor and birth experience is going to be better, so in many ways, I'm looking forward to doing that.