My pledge to you

It's September! Not usually my favorite month by a long shot, but this year it's looking pretty good. This month we have a reasonably good chance of finally meeting our son! According to the pregnancy bible, What to Expect When You're Expecting, approximately 50% of pregnancies go on past the due date, most often first time mothers. I've always accepted he could likely have an October birthday, instead. But I can say for sure that the month of his due date has arrived!

Tomorrow also brings me to 37 weeks pregnant, which my doctor said is full term. So while I'd prefer he still in a few more weeks and finish all that brain development and everything, delivering prematurely is no longer a worry. Obviously that doesn't mean I'm set for a life of everything coming up roses as a parent, but it's still nice to have one scary thing off the table.

In honor of this exciting month, I finally added a Twitter and Instagram widget to my blog, in case you want to follow me and see brand new baby pictures and possibly labor updates. I'm still now quite satisfied with how they look, but I played with it until I got bored and moved on to another activity. The downside is that now I feel pressure to tweet out amusing sentiments. Don't hold your breath for that.

My sister and I recently discussed the disturbing, not really new trend of women posting TMI information involving their cervix on social media, often under the guise of "I need to inform my friends and family,". No, actually you don't.

First of all, if your female friends are anything like pre-pregnant me, and your male friends are anything like every man ever, they don't even know what terms like "effacement" and "station" even mean. I'm not going to explain because I assume if you don't know, you don't care. All people actually want is to know when the baby is here with a picture or two AFTER he or she has been cleaned off. Possibly also the name. We came up with ours before we even got married, and have had it under wraps. We also came up with the fetus's (what's the possessive of fetus?) nickname, L'4eous, years and years ago.

Second of all, EW. The internet just does not need to know anything about parts of your body a bathing suit covers. I've shared what goes on behind closed doors at the doctor's office with exactly two people, my mom and my close friend who is due two weeks after me, both by request. (Assuming it goes without saying that I share with my baby daddy.) I guess if I'm wrong, which is rare but not unheard of, and someone else out there really wants that information, you can text me. If you don't have my number, we aren't close enough to discuss intimate details.

One caveat - I do have full intentions of blogging the birth story, so I'll probably have to at least allude to that information to do so successfully. But I'll put a warning up at the top of the post if I remember, or if not you can just use common sense and assume.

I've already posted my birth plan, but I'll repost a slightly adapted version to refresh everyone's memory.

1. Have a healthy baby
2. Stay healthy myself
3. Epidural asap

If I got to choose, I would definitely prefer to go into labor on my own and avoid scary abdominal surgery. I don't get to choose though, so if an induction or a C-section is the path to bringing a healthy baby home, then that's cool with me.

I'm definitely a lot less anxious about labor and delivery than I expected at this point. I'm also swinging a lot more often toward the excited rather than the nervous side of the "I'm about to be a parent" spectrum. I attribute these happy shifts to a combination of two things. One is the school year starting, and the day to day stress and anxiety that comes with it taking over my brain. The other is a healthy dose of ignorance being bliss.

I'm curious if second(+) time moms feel more confident, since they've already produced a kid and kept it alive, or if without that lovely cushion of ignorant bliss it's a lot more scary. Feel free to share.

I see a lot of pictures on social media of pregnant women using their bellies as a table, and I thought that was going to be a cool little benefit. My baby is having none of that. I've only tried to rest my kindle on there so far, but he always kicks it and makes it hard to read. There's no way food or drink would survive, which seem to be the most popular choices. I might be losing it and assigning personality traits/desires based on random movements. What can I say, I'm really eager to get to know this kid.

I'm helping interview for my long term sub this week. It's basically like finding a daycare. Except with the daycare providers we looked at they all had their own kids and had like 25 years of daycare under their belt so I actually felt they were way more qualified than me to watch a baby. This is the opposite. I've taught most of these kids for 3-4 years now and probably won't feel that anyone will be good enough to care for them in my absence. I pity the applicants.

Complaining about the weather is really high on the list of things that no one wants to hear or read about, ever, but in my current situation I reserve the right to complain.



The forecast for the work week. Keep in mind it's generally 10 degrees hotter in my classroom than outside.

I prepared by refusing to expose myself to the outside world for the past two days. My feet are almost down to normal size.

What's your biggest social media annoyance at the moment?

I'm not against birth plans, since I've never actually given birth and can't judge (yet), but if any labor and delivery nurses, midwives, or OBs read here, I would really love to hear your honest thoughts about laboring women bringing in like 3 page typed documents.