We don't have a baby, but at least we have a plan.

It's frustrating, but I think we made the right choice. I had a very frank discussion with my OB, and then with Rob, about where we are. At 40 weeks 2 days, I'm not dilated. There is good news, in that the contractions on Saturday/Sunday did bring about some positive changes (I'll leave the details out...). However, if we were to decide to proceed with an induction at this point, there's about an 80% chance that I'd have at least 24 hours of labor that would result in a C-section. I've been hoping to avoid a C-section, just because there has been no reason thus far to go in that direction. The baby is healthy, there's plenty of amniotic fluid, my blood pressure is very good, and neither of us is in any particular distress. I'm not going to lie; I'm hurting and there really is no time when I'm comfortable. I'm exhausted and I have no energy because I don't eat or sleep enough. But that's not distress--that's just late pregnancy.

The plan is to give it another week (OH MY GOD ANOTHER WEEK WHAT THE HELL?!) to give nature a chance to take its course. I'm back at the perinatalogist on Friday, and again on Monday for fetal assessment (check fluid and heartbeat, rotate the tires, etc.) and then to the OB on Wednesday for one last look. At that point, we are going to go to the hospital, either for an induction with a better chance of natural delivery, or for a C-section with the knowledge that we gave this as much time as we safely could. Dr Jameson will not let me go past 41 weeks, because that's far enough past the due date for new and horrible complications to arise.

This was a tough choice. I do love Dr Jameson, because she gave the information and likely outcomes and made sure that we had the knowledge we needed to make our decision. And then once we made the decision, she proceeded without judgment. We could have decided that my discomfort was enough of a factor to change our minds about the C-section and we'd have our daughter in our arms by Saturday night after a labor that probably would be very hard on me. Tempting. Very tempting. But the whole point of this is to have a baby who is healthy, not a delivery that is convenient, and with that in mind, we're willing to give this a bit more time. Not an infinite amount of time, but another week feels like the best path for us.

Ideally, I will go into labor naturally sometime before Wednesday. It could happen. Rob is predicting that my water will break on Sunday afternoon, about 3:30--right before the Chargers game (Christ, we're still talking about football?!)--and we'd be OK with that as well. We could also still end up with a C-section. We'll deal with whatever outcome we get, because in the end, we still get to come home with our girl :).

It's going to be a long week, though.

Well that was sort of anticlimatic.

From the moment that the pregnancy test came up positive and I put my info into the due date calendar on babyfit.com, we have been staring at January 5, 2009, on the calendar. This has become one of those red letter days, against which every other date is compared. In our minds, January 5, 2009, was an important day.

It is now 5:39 on January 5, 2009, and the high point of today was my trip to Walmart.

We thought that the excitement was starting on Saturday night about midnight. I had regular contractions, and they continued through mid-afternoon on Sunday. We were stoked! And then, they just stopped. We were less stoked after that. And so now, we don't have a date that we're shooting for. There's no longer a deadline for having everything done. The clock really isn't ticking anymore. We're just.... waiting.

It's liberating, actually. The frenzied preparation of the past months is over. We've been able to slow down and look around at the things that we can do now that we may not be able to get to after she's born. Rob winterized the yard last week--not a huge project, but necessary and unlikely to be a priority with a new baby in the house. I've gotten some stuff around the house out of the way--things are clean that haven't been for a while. It's not the stereotypical pre-natal nesting instinct; we just finally had the time and the inclination to get some stuff done.

We've also had a great chance to relax with each other for longer than we'd anticipated. We're both sleeping better. We talk about what sort of parents we hope to be, beyond the previous "our kid will never do xyz" conversations. So while we're both excited for what is inevitably going to happen at some point in the next few days, we're not anxious about it.

So while I'm still going to have the conversation with my OB about maybe helping things along, it won't be because of a circled date on a calendar. She's not a library book that has a stamp in the inside cover (do they still do that?). Tomorrow's big highlight is lunch with the girls and maybe a trip to Home Depot for some weather stripping for the patio doors. Anything else that happens will be a bonus.

We know you're out there; we can hear you breathing.

According to my handy dandy tracking software, we've had about 60 unique hits on our little blog in the last two days. The downside of this is it doesn't tell us who is checking on us. If you're passing through and looking for updates, leave a comment so we know who you are!

No baby yet. We'll keep you posted. If nothing has happened by the time I see my OB on Wednesday, I think she and I are going to have a Come To Jesus talk about how we are ready to meet our daughter. I'm just exhausted. It's time.

She gets her own birthday; I get to keep mine.

I did have high hopes for a 2008 tax deduction, but it doesn't look good. This morning, it was made abundantly clear that she's going to be a January baby, and we won't be winning any "first baby of the year" awards either. And that's fine. She's healthy and active and will be here in her own time. I'm kind of relieved that we won't have to worry about getting across town to the hospital in a panic tonight when the crazy New Years Vegas party is in full force. Sure, we kind of scrambled to get everything ready, but we're so glad we did. It's hard to wait for her to get here, but it would be harder to try to do all of the scrambling with a sleeping/crying/wet/hungry baby in the house.

There's not much else going on. We're going to celebrate an early New Years with some friends tonight--the ball will be dropping at Jay and Tina's at midnight sharp, east coast time, so that the kids can enjoy it as well. We often laugh at how the parties in our circle have evolved over the years. They're much calmer and usually (but not always) quite a bit more dignified now, but no less fun.

Happy New Year!