(Dis)comfort

37 weeks and 5 days. Less than 3 weeks to go. Supposedly. Only 5 percent of babies are delivered on their actual due dates. So I might have more time. Or less. At this point, who knows?

How are you feeling? Um, fine. I guess I'm getting to that uncomfortable stage, you know, trying to find a comfortable position to get to sleep at night, but otherwise I'm fine. I have sporadic heartburn and my feet are consistently swollen (they look like little loaves of bread), but really, I'm fine.

Oh, honey, you're gonna get to the point where you're so over it, you're just gonna want it to be out. Okay, but I guess I haven't gotten to that point yet, and I don't know if I ever will. I could see if I were uber pregnant at the height of summer all sweaty and hot and bothered, but it's in the dead of winter, and I'm in no rush. Like, hold the cervical checks. For real. I mean, I'm excited to meet our little guy, but I'm not like OMGeeeee, I want to go into labor already. It's still sort of surreal to me. I'm saying, I know the baby is going to come out at some point, but I have no frame of reference for what is about to happen to me.

So, I hired a doula. My ideal is a low-intervention, non-medicated birth, and a doula will help me meet that goal. The idea is that everyone else will be focused on the baby, but the doula will be focused on me. She'll be helping me draw up a "birth plan" beforehand, helping me with pain management while I'm in labor, incorporating P into the process as well (so he's not a helpless guy not knowing what to do), providing breastfeeding support. I'm really glad we made the choice to hire her, especially for a first-time birthing experience. To be clear, I'm not wedded to having a natural non-medicated birth. It's what I want, but sometimes things don't go as planned. And I'm okay with that possibility.

My best friend expressed being annoyed with the fact that the pain women experience (in a medical situation) is often described as "discomfort." Okay, you may feel a bit of discomfort here...Bruh, it's going to hurt.

I don't know how I'm going to react to the pain of childbirth. But I'm going to try to allow my body to do what it was designed to do. And our son is going to come when he's ready to come.