Life in Chicago

Labor

Just a quick note to say that I'm pretty much in labor. I've been having really strong, regular contractions since about 8pm last evening. I've been up all night, breathing through them. Greg's been great and our doula was over at 4am with us for a while.

The contractions subsided for a while and have now returned. I'm going to continue to labor here at home through the morning and see how things go.

False Starts?

Wow, I really thought that come this time today, I was probably going to be at the hospital.

I started having pretty regular contractions yesterday at 5pm and they continued all through the evening. We ate dinner and watched a movie and they just kept coming. We finally decided to go to bed around 11pm and I thought, well, I'll just try to get some sleep and see what happens. I know that I'm supposed to rest as much as possible leading up to this huge, physical event so it seemed like the best idea.

I woke around 2am because I was feeling such a strong contraction. After that I lay awake for over an hour, counting the contractions. They were coming in strong every six minutes. It was such a surreal time, laying there in the dark, feeling my body gearing up for this major event, watching the little red numbers on the clock tick by. I kept one hand on Greg the whole time, and felt so filled with love for him and in awe of this thing we've done together.

I closed my eyes again around 3am and fell asleep again and when I woke up it was 5am and the sky was a pearly gray outside the windows and the contractions had stopped.

But now the contractions are starting to come back a bit. We'll see. I have an appointment with my midwife at 12:40 and I've been checking in regularly with my doula as well.

My friend Sarah seems to be going through the same thing so maybe she and I will have our babies on the same day after all.

To be continued...

Friday Waiting

Yesterday I worked at home all morning, mostly writing, and then I decided to drag my giant self up to work  to make our weekly team meeting. On the way there I realized that this would probably be the last time I would be able to manage getting myself to work before the baby arrives, the long drive and general inconvenience of it all just getting to be too much at 40 weeks pregnant.

When I got to work, thus proving my point, something exciting happened which I'm just going to link up, rather than describe. Again, it doesn't mean *too* much but since it happened so close to my due date, it could mean that labor is truly right around the corner.

I came home feeling excited and Greg and I took a slow walk through the park. I made turkey tacos and we watched some television before going to bed, me with hopes of my water breaking in the middle of the night (I even put a towel next to the bed, just in case). But alas, it's Friday morning and nothing has happened.

It is a beautiful day though. I'll write for a few hours and then have plans to meet up with another extremely pregnant friend for a walk in the afternoon. Tonight we're planning to go to The Counter with friends for burgers. I watched this charming video of Obama going to Five Guys for burgers the other day and it really made me want a burger (even though I'll likely go veggie or turkey).

Greg's mom has seemingly lost her patience (in a cute way - it's amazing that she can be just as excited about her 5th grandchild as she was her 1st) and they have decided to drive from Ohio to Chicago today. They'll be staying with Greg's sister who lives north of the city. We warned her that I could still go two weeks overdue but they're coming anyway.

My aunt Pam swears the baby is coming this weekend. There's a full moon on Sunday and she thinks that's sure to do it. We'll see.

Our only plans for tomorrow (my due date) are to check out the new Whole Foods in town. It's supposedly one of the largest in the country, akin to a small, liberal, foodie universe. Sounds like a good place to break my water.

I promise to update the blog as soon as something really good -- like water breaking or contractions -- start. I have cell phone blogging capabilities and I know how to use them. Feel free to place your best guesses in the comments section as to the due date, sex and weight. And wish me luck! 

***

Oh, and Greg has something new up about becoming a father on The Nervous Breakdown: With One Day Before the Due Date, I Go Over My "To Due" Checklist.

Thursday Waiting

Well, my due date is now two days away. I can hardly believe it's June already. June being this month that I've been waiting and waiting for since last September when I first found out I was pregnant. And now it's here and this big date, June 6th, is only two days away. And June 6th will most likely come and go without the arrival of baby.

I saw my midwife on Tuesday and I'm now 2 centimeters dilated and my cervix is soft and spongy (you really wanted that detail, didn't you?). All good signs but they still don't mean too much. I could go into labor today...or not for 2 more weeks.

I'm still feeling pretty uncomfortable with a lot of pelvic pressure that makes it hard to get up and around. I've been working from home, getting a lot of writing done and still managed to make it to yoga yesterday, which at close to 40 weeks feels like an accomplishment.

Sweet and funny husband that he is, Greg brought home an old Sega the other day and so for the last couple of nights we've been sitting on the couch playing Sonic the Hedgehog like a couple of high school kids. Yes, baby, this is how I spent the last days before your arrival -- playing video games.

But really, everything is done. I can't water the plants anymore or they'll drown. There's only so many times I can straighten the sheets in the nursery and the freezer literally won't fit any more food.

Back to waiting.

Knowing

It's a rainy Tuesday morning and the house is cool and dark. I like the rain. It reflects my quiet mood and makes me feel better about staying in all day.

I'm feeling better than yesterday, with a bit more energy and a more positive outlook. These last days continue to be so surreal. This waiting for something so unknown. I vacillate between a restless impatience and a calmer state of staying present, my moods swinging back and forth almost hourly. Sometimes I find it easy to simply be here in these last days, 9 months pregnant, 31 years old, married and living in Chicago. But sometimes I feel frozen with a strange anxiety about this waterfall of life I am about to go over.

I still can't really imagine what it's going to be like to actually meet our baby and hold it in my arms. I still worry about what kind of mom I'll be. I worry about loving the baby. I mean, I know I will eventually, but will I love it right away? Will it be an easy, immediate thing? Or will it be a slower, deepening?

Yesterday I read this week's Modern Love essay written by a woman who writes a weekly column for a CA newspaper about love. For over two years she has interviewed hundreds of couples about how they found each other and how they fell in love. She writes, "So many of the people I interview have gut feelings and are hit with lightning bolts and simply “know.” But no matter how many times I hear these stories, and I hear them every week, I have yet to understand."

I remember feeling perplexed about this "knowing" as well. I know at least three couples who report having just "known" when they had met their future spouse. I used to envy them so much, used to compare all the various loves I'd felt to what they had. I used to wonder if it was real, this knowing. I used to doubt that it was, the doubting sometimes being easier than believing in it and not having found it for myself. 

But then I met Greg. And it really was like that. Like a lightening bolt. Like something simple and clean, something immediate. I just knew. It was almost Taoist in its simplicity. The knowing was so real that it almost felt like the opposite of everything else. Above all, it was easy. And love had always been so difficult. It had always required work and negotiation and thought and assessment and planning and maneuvering. But what I felt with Greg was none of those things at all. What I felt with him was just purely what it was, and nothing more.

It changed my ideas about love completely. It made me question everything I always thought I'd understood about it. It changed the way I viewed other people's relationships. Could everyone have this? Aren't we all each entitled to finding some kind of great love? If so, why do so many of us never find it?

Early on with Greg, I remember feeling really struck by the realization that every relationship I'd ever been in, every date I'd ever been on, every fleeting glimpse of love I'd ever felt, had all been part of the path that led me to him. The realization was that I could not have met him without all that had come before and feeling this gave me a profound appreciation for each of those relationships and encounters. 

But does that mean that those who have not found their great love should just soldier on, pushing through and past whatever mediocre relationship they're currently in? Does it mean that even if they do, they are guaranteed to find that great love?

Perhaps it's not always so simple. Perhaps it's not always a lightening bolt, this knowing. Maybe sometimes it comes on more slowly, the knowing deepening and materializing over time. These thoughts leading me back to the baby and how it will be to finally meet it and hold it in my arms. Will there be an instant knowing? Or will it be something that comes on slowly over time?

--

Congratulations to our birth class friends, Emily & Dan, who gave birth to a baby girl this morning. One down.

Monday

It's Monday morning and I'm at home in my pajamas, at my desk. I'm feeling tired and low-energy this morning. I didn't sleep well, waking often to turn over and getting up frequently to shuffle to the bathroom. I'm not a fan of being 39 weeks pregnant. There was a loud thunderstorm around 4AM and I lay awake under the sheets, wondering, waiting.

I'm definitely in the home stretch at least. Even if I go a full two weeks over term then I'll still have this baby in less than three weeks. That's something, right?

I know I'm complaining a lot but the main problem is that I'm having an incredible amount of pelvic pressure these days, making it difficult to walk for long periods of time, to get up and down from a seated position and I'm experiencing an intense amount of pain at night when I have to turn over or get out of bed. All of this only serves to limit my activities and leaves me feeling restless and bored on the couch.

Greg has been very sweet and attentive, even though there's really not much he can do besides attempting to be sympathetic and trying not to get fed up with me when I ask him for the hundredth time when the baby is coming out.

We did manage to have a nice weekend, despite my general moodiness and discomfort, enjoying dinners with friends Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, taking slow walks, browsing Green City Farmers Market and even making it to the beach to lie in the sand for a while yesterday afternoon.

I think that everyone I know called me this weekend, even though I never once picked up. Seems that all my friends have decided that the baby should be here by now and were all calling to check in. I promise: I'll let you know when it's here! Even though I appreciated the phone calls I just haven't felt like talking to anyone. 

Today is a rainy Monday and I'm going to list about the house for a few hours probably, hopefully making a trip to Trader Joes later and hopefully getting some work done even though I just kind of want to go back to bed.

Waiting

The days just keep getting stranger, heavier and more laden with anticipation. For a while I let myself get caught up in it all, thinking and hoping that the baby might really come at any moment. But that tact was beginning to leave me breathless with anticipation, so I've now taken the new approach of trying to just settle down about it all and try to keep myself busy.

I had an appointment with my midwife on Tuesday and found out that there has been no change since the week before. I'm still 1 cm dilated and 50% effaced. This was disappointing to hear and part of what led to my deflation about the whole thing. After all of my/our efforts to speed this process along (efforts that are tastefully described here by a friend who is now 9 or 10 days overdue) Greg and I were both quite dismayed to learn that nothing had changed.

The baby is just going to come when it's ready. Be it today (please??) or in 3 weeks (oh, please don't let this go on that much longer). I'm technically due one week from tomorrow: June 6.

Last night I was going through photos from last summer and I can't believe how skinny and lithe I once was. It's hard to believe that I ever had a body that wasn't as huge and awkward as the one I now occupy. It's hard to believe that I may one day have that body back again. I miss it. But really, there's no sense in thinking about all that right now. These last few weeks of pregnancy are the ultimate lesson in trying to be present, to simply be what is. Breathe, Claire, breathe.

I'm spending the day at home writing today and it's impossibly lovely outside. I'll take a walk to the square later and we're having dinner with friends tonight. Plans to go to Green City Market tomorrow and yoga on Sunday. Not much else to report. Just waiting. And breathing.

Letter

Dear Baby,

Almost a week has passed since I last wrote. These days are so strange. I keep cleaning the house, watering the plants, fussing over little details in your nursery, waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting for you to arrive.

The anticipation is beginning to make me crazy. Your father and I are so eager to meet you, so ready to begin this new life we’ve been working towards. We’re ready to put into practice all the books we’ve read, the dvds we’ve watched, and all that we’ve learned in our birth classes. It’s as though we’ve been training for a marathon and any minute now someone is going to pull the trigger that starts the race…but when??

Today is the two-year anniversary of the day your father and I first met. Two years seems at once like an eternity and like yesterday. When I think of all that has happened in the last 24 months I can hardly believe that it has been such a short time. But when I think back to the person I was on that warm May afternoon, it seems like forever ago.

I’ll never forget being on that airplane from Boston to Chicago, never forget the feeling of suspension as the plane swept across Lake Michigan, skirting the skyscrapers, the lake spreading out like an ocean for as far as I could see. What am I doing, I asked myself as we descended over the city. I was supposed to be home in Los Angeles that day. My friend Lucy was staying in my house. We had a party to go to that night. But instead I found myself on an airplane to meet Greg in Chicago.

I had been on Cape Cod for my grandmother’s funeral. We like to joke now that she died on my birthday so that I could meet my husband. All she ever wanted was to see me married off. Perhaps an antiquated thought, but I know that it came from her wanting to see me secure and part of a family again. Well, she got her wish.

As the plane touched down I turned on my phone and texted your father. I just landed. He texted back right away. He was waiting in baggage claim. I’m nervous, I wrote. You’ll be fine, he wrote back. I remember the escalator and the white skirt I was wearing. I remember walking towards him and then standing there in front of him. And knowing right then and there. It’s you, realizing that somehow, all along, I’d been waiting for him, that everything in my life had, in some strange way, led up to that very moment.

He was nervous too and got us lost trying to find the garage where he had parked the car. We rode the same escalator twice, beads of sweat breaking out over your father’s forehead. I didn’t care if we rode the escalator all day. I wanted to touch his arm. We smiled at each other. And then we finally found the little green Honda, the one I drive to work in every day now, and there we were, your mother and father sitting side by side for the first time in their lives. Can you see it?

We drove to his apartment in Lakeview and we walked up the street together to his building. The leaves were thick with green, just as they are now. It was a warm, sunny day and inside all the windows were open, laughter and music trickling up from the street below. I smiled at the bare kitchen and the boy-plaid quilt stretched neatly across your father’s bed. We looked at his bookshelves and he offered me some strawberries.

That afternoon we rode the train down to the Loop and walked through Millennium Park holding hands. We walked across the bridge, looking back at the cityscape and I told him that I didn’t know if I ever wanted to get married, that I wasn’t sure if I wanted children. I told him that if I did, it would only be because I loved someone so much that I couldn’t help but want to make more of that love.

I could tell even then that your father would love being a father, that to deny him being a father would be the harshest cruelty. I wanted him to know that I was uncertain of that future. But even as I said those words, even as I looked into his impossibly blue eyes, some part of me knew that he would be your father, and I your mother.

So, today, dear baby, is the anniversary of the day you were conceived, not physically, but psychically. And true to so many important dates in my life, today overlaps with your grandmother’s birthday. Your father’s mother was born today, solidifying just that much more your predestination.

Flying home the next day to Los Angeles I wrote in my journal. I knew yesterday when I boarded that plane to Chicago that I was setting in motion certain things, that I was irrevocably altering the course of my life…

I think it was my parents who taught me to take chances in life, to be the kind of woman who boards a plane on a whim to meet a man she’d never met. And I hope it is us, your father and I, your parents, who give you the same gift: That life is a wide, open thing. That it is yours for the taking. That it moves forward fiercely and that when something is as it should be, you will know.

Love,
Mom

p.s. Hurry up and come out so we can meet you!

 

Tuesday

I have nothing interesting report. It's Tuesday morning and I'm simply hugely pregnant and about to head to work, out of lack of anything better to do.

It was a really fun weekend filled with lots of friends and good meals and sleeping in and long walks and yoga and hours spent reading books and magazines on the deck...but now I'm ready to have this baby. As of now I have nothing scheduled for weeks, everything having been cleared to make way for baby. Absolutely everything that we could have ready is ready -- the nursery, the car seat, the bassinet, diapers, hospital bags, I've even frozen some meals to have on hand.

And so there's just nothing left to do but wait. And wait. And think about it...and not think about it.

Oz

Last night I dreamed that Greg and I impulsively moved to Australia. Like, right now. With me 8.5 months pregnant. Without a plan. It was both terrifying and exhilarating and probably one big metaphor for the fact that we're about to move to a brand new country in a sense anyway once this baby arrives.

We flew in over the Sydney harbor and it was so beautiful. I was so astounded that we were there, so scared and so, so excited. I kept worrying about Greg's mom and what she would think once we called to tell her that we moved to Australia. I kept imaging the phone tree that would go on with all of Greg's siblings: "Um, so Greg and Claire up and moved to AUSTRALIA."

 I also kept thinking about how fun it would be to post on my blog that we were in Australia and how I'd get to meet lots of my long-time Aussie readers and how cool that would be. (One day I swear I'll get there and I'll be sure to let you know!)

I have to say that it was relieving to wake up in our bedroom and to know that I wasn't going to have to worry about having our baby any minute in a totally foreign country.

Well, it's Sunday and I'm about to head out to yoga. It's a beautiful day here and we're having a little deck party later this afternoon. It's been a nice weekend, somehow relaxing despite all of Greg's guy friends taking over our house. 

I am ready to have this baby though. In a million ways. I just want to meet it, first of all! But second of all, I am so uncomfortable. I actually cried for a minute on the couch late last night because my whole body hurt so much, everything stretched to capacity.

When is it going to happen?? The suspense!