Welfareloser's Blog

and he just shifed into the higher gear. at my ob/gyn appointment yesterday, at the end of my 36th week, i told her about the contractions i’d been having since about christmas eve, she did an internal exam, and declared me 2 cm dilated and 75% effaced.

(note to the men in my audience who don’t know what the hell this means: my cervix has started opening – when it’s at 10 cm, it’s time to push, because something’s peeking. 2 cm means labor is imminent – maybe tomorrow, maybe in a few weeks; 4 cm or more means you’re going to have that baby in the next couple of days, but you can sit around 2-3 cm for weeks. now, effacement refers to how much the exit chute has thinned… at 75% gone, labor is probably going to kick it into high gear within the next week. i should probably also mention here that a “due date” is at the end of week 40, and babies born after week 37 are considered full-term rather than premature. my due date is february 5th, so i’m early here, as i expected, given that all of my kids have been early and that, in general, the more kids you have, the faster you can grow each successive one to full-size.)

me: so, we’re looking at some time in the next two weeks or so?

ob/gyn: well… you never know. you’re definitely not making it to your due date, though. next week sometime is probably a good guess.

me: okay. (at this point, i’m thinking, shit… i need to dig out the base for the new carseat, buy some diapers, write down all the things PRM, or whichever of our relatives takes over for a few days, needs to do to get the kids off to school in the mornings, charge the camera, find the extra cell-phone charger to take with me, pack my cosmetics bag, make sure my ipod is stocked with entertainment and charged…)

ob/gyn: and at this point, we wouldn’t do anything to delay your labor. your baby’s healthy, you’re fine, and i’m guessing you won’t be upset if you don’t make it to your due date.

me: nope. he seems to be big enough.

ob/gyn: *pats my belly* yeah… he’s definitely big enough.

let me reiterate that i am spectacularly large. i weigh in at 158 now, 48 lbs more than normal. and it’s all belly. 5-10 lbs of it is distributed body fat, i have no swelling from fluid retention; it’s pretty much all baby and baby-growing paraphernalia. i look more alarmingly pregnant now than i did at 36 weeks with the twins, to the point that last week, the kids’ pediatrician asked me if they were SURE i was just carrying a singleton. now, some of this is due to the fact that my abdominal muscles can’t do shit to hold it all together anymore. seriously, i have three sets of stretch marks now, all running in different directions and overlapping. my stretch marks are plaid. not only will i never wear a bikini again, i probably won’t do another sit-up in this lifetime. i have more scar tissue than normal skin on my ventral surface between my ribs and pelvis, and very little sensation left when anything touches me there. it is safe to assume that the underlying musculature has suffered a similar fate.

so some of my girth is due to a complete lack of muscle tone, but mostly, it’s just because this baby is freakin huge. i think. maybe i’m wrong, and he’ll be a polite little 7-pounder. PRM has placed his bet at somewhere between 9 and 10-1/2, and i’m wishful-thinking 8 and some change… my other option in betting against him was something OVER 10-1/2 lbs, and my brain is just not willing to go there, let alone my vagina.

so. my next post will probably be baby pictures. for now, i leave you with the twits checking out the new baby bed. they stomped and shook and jumped and wrestled, so now we know the damned thing is sturdy. i had been wondering if the twits would be regressing any when the baby showed up… oh, yeah. dramaqueen flat-out refused to get out of the crib when i told him to, and threw a non-verbal screaming-and-kicking fit when i hauled his ass down. (he’s also managed to climb up into it several times since then, which means i probably either need to put a padlock on the outside of the baby’s door or a shock collar on dramaqueen.) spazmonkey, ever the subtle one, just made himself comfortable, played with the mobile, and crapped his pants. at least he was verbalizing about it appropriately, though:

me: why do you smell like a sewer?

SM: EEEEEEEW!

me: did you poop your pants?

SM: i peed the poop.

me: what?

SM: *pats his ass* right back here it’s the brown water EEEEEEW! clean it up, mom!

(okay. this boy is on a yogurt and fiber diet until the damned diarrhea quits.)

and for comparison’s sake, here’s a 3-1/2 year old EG checking out one of his brothers’ cribs:

now, last night, my husband brought home two fat chipotle burritos for dinner. i unwrapped mine, held it up to him, and told him to take a good look, because he’d be seeing it again in a couple of days in the delivery room. (another aside to the males who have no clue what i’m talking about: women in labor poop. when you work your entire abdomen that hard to force out a baby, you’re also going to wind up forcing out anything hanging out in your lower intestinal tract. so make a mental note for future reference: this is another good reason not to videotape, or even watch personally, the birth of your children. instead of stationing yourself to see your new baby arrive into the world, wreaking utter destruction on your favorite toy on his way out, station yourself by your wife’s head. hold her hand and say nice things. you get points for being “supportive,” and you don’t have to live with the image of poop, slimy baby, and utterly wrecked vagina burned into your brain for the rest of your life.) anyway, it was a rare moment of triumph that i actually managed to traumatize and disgust him (this is the guy who later joked with jokerjitsu and slutmonkey about “climbing mount preggers” for some action, about how if i didn’t shut up and get him a beer he’d knock me up with an ectopic asshole baby, and about he and jokerjitsu taking a 12-pack with them to the delivery room, on the grounds that 1) they were doctors and thus in charge of deciding what was appropriate behavior in a hospital setting, and 2) at least they weren’t smoking their cigars yet. crudeness is standard humor around here.) prm has two achilles heels: snakes and poop. and i do so love putting a big razor-mark in an achilles heel!

one last thing to share: nodamnsense had a patient a while back who would whack off in his hospital bed while watching the “breastfeeding channel” (a 24-hour video feed of breastfeeding instruction for all the new mommies in the hospital.) he would then hit the call button for the nurse, and try to time it just right so that she walked in just in time to witness him coming.

totally unrelated to anything. but funny!