Knock Me Up

I think I’m almost prepared for the baby to be here. All weekend R. and I have been cleaning out closets, packing away extraneous files, and made what I hope is our final trip to Buy Buy Baby. After six attempts, we’ve achieved the right configuration in the bedroom to accommodate the playard, changing table, bed, dresser, and two night stands. All in an 8 x 13 room. I still have about twenty items to check off my prep list (and another twenty to add), but if the baby were to come tomorrow I think we could manage. We have diapers, a changing pad, a place for the baby to sleep, my breasts. After months of avoiding baby stores and stuffed animals, I now happily arrange tiny onesies and sleep suits on the bed and marvel at how they will be filled in a few weeks. Who will occupy them? What will he or she look like? Will it be a he or she? In my final month, I’ve let myself get romantic and imagine a cooing baby in my arms, hours shifting back and forth in my glider, nesting in one of my new lounge outfits bought specially for long winter days of nursing.

By working on my checklist, I’ve done a good job distracting myself from the actual birth. I went from pregnancy to baby, forgetting (well, not forgetting but maybe conveniently ignoring) the fact that I have to yet endure a sweaty, painful labor. (I called one of the nurses this morning to see if I could bring a robe to the labor room. She said not to because it would only get bloody) It’s easy to deny the least pleasant aspect of something.

But now that the preparations are almost done, I’m left with the stark reminder that this baby has to come out, physically and painfully, soon. Most days I forget to do my kegels (which are now nearly impossible to feel with the added pressure on my abdomen). I promise myself I will do perineal massage, however uncomfortable and immodest, to help avoid an episiotomy. R. and I have practiced our 1, 2, 3, 4 and he-he hoo-hoo Lamaze breathing twice. Am I in denial? Why am I more worried about diapers and room layout than perhaps the most challenging and painful event of my life? Maybe I’m thinking about that epidural too much. More and more people are telling me how it made their childbirth experience better, by reducing the pain they could actually enjoy the birth.

Yesterday a friend reminded me that women give birth all the time, gently suggesting I stop freaking out about it. Yes, they do it all the time, but not me!