Week 39: The lion sleeps tonight

Well, the full moon came and went with nothing but more prodromal labor and no baby in sight. Le sigh. So to keep my mind off of it, we enjoyed the company of my sister and her beautiful family who were visiting in town from the Boston area. We had a taco dinner at home, went to the pool during the day and celebrated the wedding of mutual friends this past weekend. It was a really sweet time. Watching Anaïs run around and play with her cousins was heartwarming and got me even more excited about how our family is growing with the addition of this little boy.
Now, coming down from the weekend, I’m feeling more exhausted, heavier and to be perfectly honest, more irritated than I’d like to admit. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Being this pregnant in the hottest part of the summer is bad. I’m already incubating a human inside of me, so the idea of my own body being cooked in this heat feels like a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. I’ve tried to keep busy and cool by staying indoors, but I’ve been feeling guilty about not being able to do as much with Anaïs as I’d like.
Then there’s the other guilt I carry with me—the one that has a sprinkle of frustration with it, too. It’s the kind where I get down on myself for not being able to do as much as I did the first time around at 39 weeks. I remember being pregnant with Anaïs and feeling tired but still being able to do things without feeling winded. And then I remind myself that back then, I didn’t have a 3-and-a-half year old girl to run after on top of being pregnant, too. If I wanted a nap, I could take one whenever I wanted. I wasn’t on anyone else’s schedule but my own, really.
I saw Brenda this week for our regularly scheduled prenatal appointment, and everything looks good. During our appointment, she could feel the baby’s position and locate where his shoulders are already! We chatted a little bit about how I’m feeling, and she reminded me of an article she posted on Facebook a couple weeks ago about this “place of in-between.” There isn’t an English word for it, but the Germans have one: zwischen. It perfectly and succinctly summarizes exactly how I’m feeling right now, and it helped me put in perspective the time that I do have at the moment. She is in a constant state of in-between as she waits for moms to have their babies, too, because she’s a midwife who is always on-call. The difference is that she’s not just sitting around watching the clock. She actually lives and does things—and when the time comes, then the time comes. That’s something I just have to keep in mind through those tough moments.
So, in these last few days (or possibly weeks), I’m just gonna try to laugh through it all. And make fun of myself and all the weird aches, twinges and zings that pregnancy brings. Because honestly, there is no other time in my life that will ever feel this way again. This little Leo baby boy is putting me through the ringer, and he’s not even here yet! So why not just find the humor in it?