A Week of Remembering: Wednesday (and Thursday)

Your impatience has made me giggle, oh blogosphere--it matches what I was feeling at this time last year. In our last instalment, the midwives got into a panic and threatened to get an obstetrician to induce me, but then didn't. My sister left work and moved into our guest room, and Pynchon drove me to appointments and tried to appear calm. Nothing happened.

(And we were secretly relieved: Tuesday's date was 6/6/6. It seemed inauspicious.)

Wednesday.

Wednesday was Pynchon's birthday--our baby's due date. It had taken several months for Pynchon to reconcile himself to possibly sharing a birthday with his child. He was sure to never get his own cake or his own presents again. I assured him as best I could that all the babies are born weeks early in my family. As time passed, and continued passing, this argument lost is persuasive force.

Wednesday dawned with me still pregnant and still not in labour. It was outrageously hot and I now felt the added pressure of meeting my sister's and husband's expectations--they had booked the day off work! And the midwives! They kept coming to my house and poking my innards. I felt that, to be polite, really I should go into labour. Seriously.

We spent they day alternately trying to stay cool and rested, and trying to annoy me into going into labour. We drove to the park, where my sister shouted "pick 'em up, put 'em down" at me when my pace on the path flagged. She believed in induction by peregrination: we traced all the paths they had. My feet hurt and I was too hot, but still not in labour. For the afternoon we rented comedian DVDs: Chris Rock. I lay on the couch in the cool cool basement and felt sorry for myself while trying to laugh. The DVD wasn't very funny.

We celebrated Pynchon's birthday with dinner and dessert at a local coffee house, with Uncle J. We played Scrabble. I sat on the outside of the booth, because I had to pee every 20 minutes, that frustration tablespoon-dribble that feels so urgent but is so unsatisfying to relieve. Much shuffling between table and bathroom for me, much gawping and clucking by restaurant patrons aghast at my hugeness.

I was, by this point, wearing the emergency smock dress: it was long, and it was ugly, and it made me look even more spherical than ever, but it FIT, blessedly loose, and even if my t-shirt was riding up over my belly, no one could see. The outfit was completed, I share with you oh blogosphere, by a pair of Pynchon's underwear, boxer briefs, because my gelatinous inner thighs were rubbing together something awful.

[It's very kind of you to say I was all belly: but I gained 50 pounds, a goodly portion of it in my face, inner thighs, and upper arms. I look all belly, because I really carried round and forward. Come to think of it, I WAS pretty cute ;-) ]

Wednesday was anticlimactic. Nothing happened but more of the same. We went for another walk, on the local nature trail, me in my fluorescent green terry cloth shorts, flip-flops, and Oilers t-shirt. I was a spectacle, and people quite literally pointed and laughed. Pynchon teases me about that outfit to this day.

Joan and Nikki came by to do another exam: dilated another half-centimetre, but baby not dropped, and labour not started. They promised to make the exam extra rough, in the hopes of provoking The Unborn into action--they urged me to call if things heated up. Nope. We all went to bed disappointed--except maybe Pynchon, who got a piece of cake, and a Jay-Z CD and a Gwen Stefani CD and didn't have to share his birthday with anyone ... except my sister.

I got up at around 2am to watch another episode of Gilmore Girls on DVD, to rub my belly and talk to The Unborn, to tell my baby how eager I was to meet him (I was convinced it was a boy).

Thursday I felt downright sheepish. Pynchon went back to work, rightly reasoning that he would be better off using up his vacation time after the birth than before it. He works about a 7 minute drive from home anyways, and carries a Crackberry. My sister and I spent the morning together, lounging around and talking, and bonding, and then, desperate to do something productive, we went to the mall to buy me new flip flops. My other pair, 6 weeks old, were mashed beyond repair. She drove me home, and packed her things--her own family needed her, but she promised to come back the minute I went into labour.

We joked that the key to breaking the impasse was for her to drive the 100 km back home--baby would of course make her turn around and come back, probably later that night.

Which is just what baby did. Tune in tomorrow ... for all the gory bits!
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I did forget to say yesterday that, workaholic that I am, before I left the office, I emailed the final version of my chapter on weblogs to my editor. When I got the page proofs back a couple of weeks ago (the book is now forthcoming) I noticed that all the web addresses in the works cited list have a 'date accessed' of June 6, 2006. Awwwww .....