Still Pregnant, Still Rambling

I made the Ogre take a picture of me yesterday, ostensibly to chronicle my 37 week enormity, but really because I actually took a shower and blow-dried my hair, and I wanted to mark the occasion with photographic evidence. Please note that immediately proceeding this picture the Ogre measured me, and found that I am 4 feet 3 inches around. Which is why my smile is slightly forced.

Thank you all for your wonderfully sympathetic comments and your prayers. At my 37 week appointment this morning, the doctor found that my fluid levels have gone down a tiny bit and the baby’s head is already engaged, making a cord prolapse extremely unlikely. She seemed relieved and much less worried, and even said that a 39 week induction was now optional rather than mandatory. I’m hoping it won’t be necessary to even consider it, seeing as how I’m already dilated and effaced and I’ve been having these great, no-joke contractions all morning since the appointment. I even optimistically went straight from the appointment to Whole Foods, hoping that the oh-so-pleasant cervical check would incite my water to break, but in vain. Sadly my water did not break, even though I lingered hopefully for a while near the “eco-friendly soy organic clothing for women the size of my left leg”.

In other navel-gazing baby news, Lincoln already weighs 7 lbs 3 oz, and while the rest of him is measuring 38 weeks, his head is measuring 41 weeks. Say it with me — “OUCH!” Yeah. Even though I’d like to skip the epidural again this time, seeing the enormous, gigantic head on my belly-dweller is making that whole “needle in my spine” thing seem a lot less frightening. And after all, what are the odds that I’ll get a drunk anesthesiologist twice in one lifetime? Surely I can’t be that unlucky, right?

Anyway. I was going to write another rambly post two days ago, but I realized when I sat down to the computer that it was September 11th, and writing about anything other than 9/11 seemed wrong. However, I don’t have anything to contribute to the reflections and remembrances that swirled around the internet, and trying to come up with something to write about seemed really self-serving and horrible. So I didn’t write at all. Then yesterday I actually got up, showered, got dressed, had coffee with my neighbors, took Charlotte to ballet, registered as a parishioner a mere 9 months after we moved, and did other stuff adults do. It was exhausting and foreign, so I had to lay on the couch all afternoon while the kids watched “Spiderman” and recuperate. Today I’ve already gone to the doctor, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Target, plus I’m writing this blog post and I’m going to do laundry, pay bills, and make brownies after I’m done. That means this weekend I’ll be lying on my couch, waiting for someone to bring me a trophy for being so responsible.

Seriously, being a grown-up is exhausting. It’s less exhausting when you don’t have a 7 1/2 pound minion beating the crap out of your kidneys and repeatedly shoving his enormous head against your cervix, causing no end of embarrassing doubling-over moments that you can’t explain when people ask if you’re okay because apparently the word “cervix” grosses out the rest of the world (sorry, world). But even when you’re lithe and lean and your uterus is the size of a grape or whatever, don’t you just get exhausted, trying to be responsible? Don’t you just want to turn to your husband and say, “Look, dude, you be the grown-up this year. I’m gonna swan off and teach college students to be brilliant like me while drinking coffee all day long.” No? It’s just me, then? Okay. Awesome. *cue awkward silence*

Just kidding. (About the teaching students thing, not about anything else.) I know my husband works really, really hard, as do the other professors I know. They get very little sleep, no glory, (unless you’re a professor at Harvard or something) and have to put up with a lot of crap, plus they’re actually responsible for making sure their students learn what they’re supposed to learn. I, on the other hand, would teach a college class like this:

Welcome to Medieval Lit! I know this class is called “Medieval Lit”, but what we’re really going to be focusing on this semester is Salman Rushdie, because I like him better than the entirety of Medieval Literature. Don’t complain, okay, this’ll be way more fun, I promise. Plus if you’re good maybe we can watch some Bollywood movies, just for the hell of it. Bonus points to anyone who can make curry for the class. India FTW!

And that’s why my husband is getting his doctorate while I persist in my delusion that I would have made a way better professor of English Literature. (But admit it, that class sounds like fun, right?)

This appears to be my entire blog post for the day. I don’t know what to say about the absolute de-evolution of my blogging skills. I’d make you a brownie to repay you for the time you just wasted, but you’d have to come to Southwest Florida to get it. And there’s no guarantee that I won’t be in labor by the time you get here, so that is essentially an empty offer.

Here! Read this! It’s about the Hunger Games, and it’s on Cracked.com. It’s hilarious. Now this wasn’t a total waste of your time. Enjoy the rest of your day.