Hiatus

Writing elsewhere for a while. Clearing my head without feeling like I have to censor myself.

Baby is beautiful and a joy to be around. Here he is at 1 week:

hes here

baby z was born at 3:55pm on oct 8th, two days b4 due date.
i birthed all natural, no drugs. never felt better. no pain afterwards. i'm tired and sore and tore but im fine. baby z is so amazing.

will write more when im not tired

LABOR!

Contractions started at 5:30 this morning.
Water broke at 7:30. It was a small gush. At first I thought I peed myself but it was a lot of liquid. I had S smell it b/c my nose is clogged. Not pee.
Contractions are 10 minutes apart and mild

Have appt with Dr. Pepper at noon. Think the plan is to go there at that time, have him confirm that I am indeed in labor. (It just seems too good to be true.) Then its off to my friend's upper east side apartment to labor in comfort until I get to 5-1-1 or 4-1-1. That is, when contractions are 5 or 4 minutes apart, lasting for 1 minute and have been consistent for 1 hour. At that point its off to the hospital.

I'm off to bake a cornbread and maybe some muffins.

Sick

At the moment, it's 5:30 am and I'm up, drinking green tea and eating fruit. Nope, I'm not in labor, just trying to fight a cold. I spent the last couple of weeks staying away from everyone with a cold, which was pretty much everyone, period. However, S wasn't so cautious so he caught a cold, or maybe 2, since it seems like the past 2 weekends he's been sick, and now I have a cold. Five days before my due date.
So, now I'm hoping to go into labor after the cold is gone. I can't imagine having to deal with a stuffy nose and contractions. Plus I don't want to hold my baby for the first time with any sort of infection.
I should be over this thing by Thursday. *fingers crossed*

Closer and closer

Yesterday:

Spent the morning grocery shopping solo
Lost my mucus plug
Met S for a walk in Prospect Park
Went out to a birthday dinner with a few of his friends
Met a few of my friends at a bar for another birthday celebration
Came home around 10:30, exhausted and with a pain in my lower back that wouldn't go away.
Pain lasted all night. It was on the left side, the side I usually sleep on. I spent the night tossing and turning in pain, half hoping it was back labor, because I want to get this labor business over with, half hoping it wasn't, because I was too exhausted to efficiently deal with labor at that point.

The pain went away at some point in the early morning hours. I feel fine again. I don't want to feel fine. I would like to get this labor over with. Just when I think my stomach can't get any bigger, it does. I look ridiculous:

Hopefully he'll come out at some point this week. My mom yesterday told me that I was overdue by two weeks! I'm hoping that this is because they didn't calculated correctly. I can't go to 42 weeks. The idea is just inconceivable.

39 weeks

I'm 1cm dialated (which is nothing) and a little bit effaced. Dr Pepper checked my cervix for the first time today and remarked that I have a nice pelvis. Baby Z is still sunny side up, but apparently it's not a big deal because my pelvis can handle it.

I think I'm going all the way to my due date. Even though my tummy is HUGE, Baby Z is a normal size baby. There's just a lot of fluid in there with him. As much as I want this over with, and want to move onto the next phase of this journey, I can wait until he's ready.