Ready or not ...

When I was pregnant with E., I distinctly remember a lengthy period of time where I experienced anxiety over delivery. I had read numerous books and some were probably way too graphic and detailed for a first time mom. I did not want to have to deliver this baby! Yet I knew that one thing was for certain: this baby was going to come out and there was no way I could stop it.

So now I am on pregnancy #4 and up to this point, I haven't given delivery much thought. I mean, been there done that right? How many surprises could be left unless a dreaded C-section goes down? The real variable is that this will be hospital #4 and OB #4 (I am beginning to agree with E. that that we might move too much! But more on that below.). I have gone natural, I have gone epidural, and one common denominator remained: this baby was going to come out and there was no way I could stop it.

Like I said, up to this point I hadn't thought much about delivery ... until yesterday. That is when I went to the hospital for an emergency non-stress test for the baby. I started having a specific pain on my belly that I also had at the end of my pregnancy with P. It ended up with P. that the placenta had ruptured but we didn't know it until it had started to bleed out. Since this was the exact same pain in the exact same spot (sans blood), the doctor wanted to check it out. Changing into a hospital gown started to bring back that familiar delivery-related anxiety and I realized that I hadn't really thought about this delivery much at all. However, after the initial exam and the first five minutes of the monitors charting away, the nurse told me that the baby was doing great and I knew that they would end up sending me home. Since the test had to be at least 30 minutes long, I relaxed and was actually about to fall asleep when I heard it. Awful, awful screams. Through the wall I could clearly hear the final minutes of another mom's delivery--containing mostly profanity and cries of "help!" Then it all came rushing back to me with further clarity: this baby is going to come out and there is no way I can stop it AND IT IS GOING TO HURT. I left the hospital in a daze with one thing in mind: I am not ready to deliver a baby. I am not ready to deliver a baby. I am not ready to deliver a baby. Forget all the technology and super drugs available to me, I am not ready to deliver another baby! So that is where I am--within weeks (and maybe even days!) of delivery and I can't get the inevitable pain I am about to endure off my mind. And suddenly a "dreaded C-section" doesn't sound so dreaded at all.

Will the real nomad please stand up?
Last week, E. studied nomads during his history lessons. I was asking him questions like, "What do you call home? Where do you sleep at night? Do you move every few days or every few weeks?" Pretty straight-forward questions, right? Ones that we would all answer pretty much the same way? Not my son. His answers were so strange that I had to ask him what he meant. Bottom line: he thinks we move once a year and it waiting for us to reveal the next location! (We just passed our one-year marker in our house this past August.) Perhaps we have moved a decent amount since our marriage began, but when I asked him if he remembers how many times he has moved (answer: three. An average of every two years isn't so bad!) he didn't remember anything about living in Northern Kentucky and barely remembers any of our time in Chicago. I assured him that mommy didn't have any plans to pack up and move within the next five years ... at the very least. But what about daddy? Well, daddy started casually looking at houses online and talking about "our next house" a few months ago. Maybe we do have a nomad living among us!