40 Weeks 2 Days

If you didn't guess it after reading the title, I'm still pregnant.  I'm actually rather shocked that I have now gone past my due date.  How did this happen?

I'm doing my best to keep busy and trying to stay sane.  Keeping busy is easy enough, but staying sane is the hard part.  For one, I have Madeline driving me crazy.  I received her mid-term grades in my email this morning and went from being incredibly happy to feeling sick.  She currently has all As and an F.  Seriously, an F.  Apparently she bombed a pop quiz in her World Languages class and that is the only recorded grade this teacher has posted on the district's power school site.  If there was a class participation grade or some other quizzes or assignments up there I'm sure she'd have a D or a C, but all we have to go on is one pop quiz and it's an F.  I seriously want to rip out my hair.  Madeline doesn't seem phased by the fact that she's failing the class.  She was more upset that Bryan and I asked her to ask the teacher if there was some sort of extra credit assignment she could do to help raise her grade. (The teachers at the middle school are very big on giving extra credit to help you boost your grades.)  She's scared of the teacher and thinks he's mean so she's very rattled that we told her she needs to ask him how she can pull that F up to an acceptable grade.

I also have a neighbor who thinks nothing of calling my house every 10-15 minutes like a psychotic girlfriend when I don't answer the phone.   She almost never leaves a message.  I assume that most normal people would call once, leave a message if it's important and wait for me to call back.  This person, however, thinks that calling me excessively is the way to go.  I went shopping this morning and when I got home Bryan said she had already called 3 or 4 times.  Then she called another 3 times after I got home.  Calling me excessively makes me not want to answer the phone at all.  I'm tired and quite frankly I don't want to have to field loads of phone calls and IMs these days.

After nearly a month of constant calls, texts and IMs asking me if I've had the baby I really don't feel like communicating with anyone.  Really, would you want to have the same conversation 15 times in a day?  No, the baby's still not here.  No, I really don't know what's taking her so long.  I really have no clue when or if she will be born anytime this month.  And yes, I'm sure my dates aren't off.  Do I really need to tell you why I know I'm not off?  Perhaps you'd like me to fax you a copy of my NFP chart from January.  Oh, and by my calculations, you'll notice that the baby really should have been due on the 8th, not the 9th, thereby making me even more pregnant at this present time.

I have another appointment with the midwife I like the best at this practice this afternoon.  Bryan would like me to ask about being induced, but I'm really not interested.  I'd prefer to get through this labor with no IVs hooked up to me and I'd very much like to avoid those horrid fetal monitors as much as possible. I doubt I'd get to do either of those things while on a pitocin drip.  Last week the midwife mentioned that if I wanted to just be induced they would get it all set up for me, but she cautioned me that I'd have a harder time going without any pain meds.  I'm determined to go completely natural again so I'd like very much to avoid being induced.  Who knows, maybe having my membranes stripped for the fourth time will put me into labor.

I do think it's safe to say that I'm a little grumpy.  I feel like I'm in a holding pattern at the moment.  I have prepared multiple times for the arrival of the baby only to have to repeat the process.  I'm tired of cleaning the house thinking that it will be nice and clean for me when I get home from the hospital only to find it a mess three days later.  Every day I'm washing all of the laundry and putting it away so I can avoid a massive backlog when I get home from the hospital.  Foods I have made for myself because I was craving them are now gone (let's just say I had a lot of help with the pumpkin cheesecake) and I have no motivation to make more only to have others gobble it.  Oh, and I've come to the conclusion that the baby is not going to come when it would be convenient for the rest of us.  We've had several weeks pass by where her arrival would have been perfect timing.  This weekend is a prime example.  It was a weekend with not obligations and the midwife I like was even on call.  It couldn't have been timed better save for the fact that the baby wasn't feeling it.