Two More Weeks

The countdown to Bagel's birth becomes more intense (and even more uncertain) as we now reach the milestone of 38 weeks of pregnancy. For readers who know nothing about pregnancy, this is the point at which the baby is considered full-term and could be born any day now. 40 weeks is considered to be the length of an "average" pregnancy (hence the title of the post) but I've never yet made it past 38 weeks. And believe me, this is one instance where you really, really want to be below average. I can barely walk to the kitchen to feed the kids. I have to unload the dishwasher in four separate episodes, lying down between each one.

I've gotten extraordinarily desperate to have this baby NOW, so I've begun taking some herbs that I hope will help. So far they are at least decreasing my misery, even if they haven't yet had the desired effect. Ever since my second false-labor episode on Thursday, I'd been in constant false-labor contractions, every 20 minutes from dawn till dusk. The herbs seem to have quieted those down. On Wednesday when I go for my checkup (or maybe before, one can only hope) we'll find out if they have had other effects that have been imputed to these herbs, such as making my cervix dilate more or actually inducing labor.