Every night for the past three nights I start with cramping and contractions at about 4am. They usually stop shortly after, but this morning, they turned into regular contractions for about 7-9 minutes apart for an hour or so… and then stopped.

Well, haven’t totally stopped, but are now just sporadic. I totally give up!

I’m having bloody show now (isn’t that the loveliest expression?) and so wearing huge granny panties and a pad which is fun too. At least I feel like something is going on, but I really really thought this morning’s contractions were the real thing, so obviously I have NO idea when it’s real or not.

I sent Jeff to work, have an appointment at the midwife’s clinic at 2pm. They better tell me I’m more than 1 cm and close to real labor or I will SERIOUSLY lose it (my mind that is, not my mucus plug!)

After my appointment I go back to Phelps for another NST, will see Judy again so we can further discuss induction. I need to figure out a plan with them that does NOT involve the use of cytotec which she said is what they normally would use. I’ve read way too many scary things about cytotec so will try to figure out something else.

Hopefully I won’t need to, but at this point I’m somewhat convinced my body has NO IDEA how to go into real labor.

:(

Who would have ever thought I’d be so overjoyed to see brown discharge and a gelatinous brown glob in my toilet this morning when I peed? This pregnancy business really strips you of all modesty and decorum.

I’m glad the cramping and contractions I’ve had over the past few days seem to be doing SOMETHING.. I was beginning to think the mucus plug was some sort of urban legend, or that maybe I just didn’t have one.

I really had expected that last night would be the night I finally went into labor.. Jeff and I went to Bear Mountain State Park yesterday and we must have walked 3-5 miles. Even he was exhausted. I even bought the guided childbirth imagery that my acupuncturist played for me and fell asleep to it last night hoping it would put me in the right “ready for birth” frame of mind. Still nothing! I thought that all that exertion, imagery plus the full moon last night was going to do the trick.

Today is the birthday of both my Grandmother Eunice and Jasper’s soon to be uncle Justin, so it’s a great day to come out little one if you are listening!

Thank you all for your kind comments and reassurances after my last post. There is a part in my guided childbirth imagery where she talks about surrounding yourself with the light of every good intention and blessing ever sent your way. Thanks to you all, I feel I have so many :)

Enter the Old Navy Halloween Baby Collection to entertain me and lighten my wallet.

Check out the ridiculous cuteness of this monkey costume! How could we NOT get this for Jasper?

Obviously our little monkey must BE a little monkey, but this penguin suit is pretty darn adorable too:

They also have a really cute collection of Halloween inspired sleepwear and onesies like this one:

(It says “Mummy Loves me!”)

I must have them all!

Yep, as of my appointment yesterday I am still fingertip dilated, 50% effaced, cervix posterior i.e. not a lick of progress since last week. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

This, my friends, is why people say not to get internals. Not only are they incredibly uncomfortable, but they can be so damn discouraging.

It also doesn’t help when I visit the nest 3rd trimester boards and everyone is dilated and effaced more than me even if they are a few weeks behind me. And then there are those due a few weeks after me who have already had their babies. Stop cutting the line people! :)

I guess there is nothing surprising about the fact that my body didn’t know how to GET pregnant without help, so why would it know how to get UNpregnant?

Friday I have a Biophysical Profile (BPP) ultrasound scheduled to check growth, amniotic fluid levels etc. Hopefully those are all normal because I really really want to avoid an induction. I’m not even a good candidate for induction given that my cervix is being all Fort Knox.

I’m trying to focus on the positive, like the fact that I have time for one more pedicure before baby, one more time the house will get cleaned etc. But it’s hard. All I really want is to meet my little boy!

Ok, rant over. Thanks for listening :)

Except that I don’t have anything to say.  Its my due date and there is NO reason to think this kid is coming out anytime soon!

No mucous plug, no bloody show, none of that gross stuff that signals the onset of labor.

I am cranky, swollen and new stretch marks are popping up daily.

GET OUT!!

My mom offered to come with instead, so I didn’t have to feel like such a loser going in there alone. The class was supposed to only be from 7-9pm, but because there was this one know it all dad to be that interrupted to correct the instructor and add his 2 cents in every second, it ended up going until almost 10pm!

Overall, it was a complete waste of time.

I was hoping there would be a doll per “couple” and they’d show us stuff like diaper changing (yes, I’m totally clueless!) and swaddling etc.

Instead, they covered 90% stuff I already knew or have done already, such as how to pick a pediatrician, how to pick a car seat etc. I guess maybe it’s not such a good idea to wait until 4 days before your due date to take any class (If only because you’ll be the only one who has to get up to pee every 10 minutes!)

There were a few good tips that I didn’t know that I am going to share with you here:

1) Babies are so unable to regulate their own temperature, that if they are too hot they will actually get a fever! (Unlike adults who would just sweat and be uncomfortable). For that reason it is much more dangerous to over dress than under dress a baby, not that you should do either, but you know what I mean.

2) When your baby is older and eating solids, you should NEVER leave them unattended with access to food because of the danger of them choking and you not being there to help. So if the doorbell rings and junior is eating some cheerios in their highchair, take all the cheerios off the high chair tray before going to answer the door. Seems pretty obvious when you hear it, but I don’t know if I would have thought of doing that.

The other thing we spent a bit of time on was she showed us the baby Heimlich maneuver which was by far the most useful thing about the class. Unfortunately it’s one of those things like CPR that I probably would forget how to do when the situation arose where I needed it… but I’m still glad that both my mom and I now know how to do it!

So that’s the report from the field… No news on the Jasper Watch front. I’m obviously still here and still pregnant! 2 days and counting until D-day…

Of course I think Jeff is gorgeous and want little Jasper to look just like him.

We pulled out some baby pictures of the two of us to see what we might be in store for. One thing is for sure, if he looks like baby Jeff:

He will have really big droopy cheeks at first and a fuzz of black hair…

He may look a little bit like a potato head a few months later (with even bigger cheeks!)…

But will a few months after that become the cutest and happiest looking baby boy in the world…

Or, if he looks like his mommy, he will:
Have A LOT of spiky black hair when born:

Have big round eyes and long curls by the time he’s crawling..

And really long eyelashes and a tiny little space between his mouth and his nose by the time he’s 1 years old..

Or, he could be a combination of all of these traits or none of them at all. Which is I guess why it’s so exciting, you just never can tell!

This may be too long and boring for you to be interested in watching, but digging up all these baby pictures made me think of the love story montage our awesome wedding videographer put together for us, it has a ton more growing up pictures and then a brief section of after we met. We showed it at our rehearsal dinner outside on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach on a big projection screen. There were tons of strangers that stopped to watch too, it was one of the many fond memories I have of our amazing wedding weekend:

3 days and counting until Due Day!!!!

For example, my wonderful friend Tracy got me a peanut shell baby carrier for my shower which I can’t wait to try it out. Its a sling style carrier, and I’ve read those are great for really small babies and for quick errands into the store when you don’t want to take the time to tie a moby wrap etc.

We also got a (totally rockin’) baby Bjorn carrier at our shower.

But were two styles of baby carriers enough? Of course not, I had to get one of these super cute Moby style wraps I blogged about a few weeks ago because so many nestie moms raved about them on the 0-6 month boards.

I think I have some sort of irrational fear that I’ll be home alone with baby and realize I needs something I don’t have and it will be an apocalyptic event!

Despite the fact that I may not have NEEDED it, I think I’m slightly in LOVE with my new wrap that arrived yesterday:

Moby Style Wrap from etsy seller Lovey Duds

I was a little worried how it would turn out because I picked the blue and orange paisley fabric as the accent fabric I wanted, but she only had a picture on her etsy site of it with a white wrap. I love white, but I was pretty sure that all that white fabric would get filthy within minutes. So I emailed her to ask if she had any other colors that would go well. She emailed me back a picture of the blue and orange paisley on top of another lightish blue looking material. It wasn’t the identical blue to the blue in the paisley but I thought it would probably look ok so I just ordered it.

I was so happy when it came, the blues match perfectly! I guess the seller liked the combo too because she took a picture of it and put it up on her site as one of her stock items.

She also includes an instructional DVD on how use the wrap. It’s actually quite easy to get the fabric tied the right way, the problem is she refers several times to wrapping the fabric around your “waist”. Yeah, I really dont’ have one of those these days, so it was kind of hard to get it to stay on properly.

I’m looking forward to trying it once my waist returns and I have an “outside” baby to put in there :)

It all started out innocently enough, I met the only midwife in the practice that I hadn’t seen before and she was as great as all the others. I weighed in at 160, a 2lb gain from last week. (I sure hope some of that is water weight!)

Then I asked for the internal. Big mistake!

First she put her fingers up there and said my cervix was still pretty posterior. At this point it was like all the other internals I’d had, mildly uncomfortable but nothing unmanageable. Then she started moving them around trying to do something, I didn’t know what but it was SO painful! Then she said “take a few deep breaths and I won’t move my fingers,” so I did, and that was ok. But then she SHOVED them in my cervix and it felt like she was digging around for something!

At one point I actually screamed “Please stop!” but she kinda kept going.. it was really weird and It still makes my cervix shrivel when I think about it. I don’t think I’m going to ask for any more internals, Jeff will just have to wait until I go into labor.

Turns out that the external opening (OS) to my cervix is a fingertip dilated, so she was trying to see if she could get her finger in there to get through to the uterus and if she could, she would have swept my membranes. But because I am only 50% effaced, she couldn’t. The back of the cervix is still pretty closed.

She said that by doing whatever the hell it was she did that she actually moved the cervix from posterior to anterior (which is good I guess) and maybe dilated me a bit more.

Jasper’s head is at -2 station, which is good progress because he was still at -4 last time they checked.

So the official stats: fingertip dilated, 50% effaced, -2 station. I really don’t think that knowing these numbers was worth the unpleasantness of the whole experience!

I also asked her at what point they start monitoring and talking induction. Their policy is to allow you to go all the way to 42 weeks so long as the BPP and NST tests don’t show any reason not to.

Jasper, this is your mother talking. It is NOT OK to stay in there another 3 weeks!! If you do, you will never hear the end of it. I will lay a Jewish mother guilt trip on you for the rest of your life – don’t say I didn’t warn you!

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In a HIGHLY disturbing new development, my stretchmarks finally arrived.. and promptly took residence just around my belly button. They waited until 38.5 weeks, JUST when I thought I had evaded them altogether. SO not cool.

In other news, this afternoon I have my 39 week appointment. Stay tuned for the 39 week state of the uterus address tomorrow morning!