As anyone with children would probably agree, the last couple of weeks before your due date are the longest you'll ever experience. Now I was on maternity leave, and had no midwife appointments or scans left to attend, I was starting to climb the walls at home.
At my 38 week appointment, my midwife was all excited for me when I said I'd been having niggling pains in my tummy and back. She measured my bump (still not following the growth chart as it should be) and commented on how low it was, meaning the baby's head was probably engaged. She was going on holiday the week after, and reckoned I'd have already had the baby by the time she got back.
She was wrong. Week 39 and 40 came and went with no sign of the bubba. I passed the time by arranging all of the clothes in the baby unit by order of size, making cakes, going for walks and - mostly- lying on the sofa watching How I Met Your Mother. Ben and I went on about 5 'last' dates, each time thinking it would be a while before we'd have a chance to go out again. I did the most cleaning and nesting I've ever done in my life, and made sure we were all stocked up on teabags and biscuits for when visitors came. I also started writing the first couple of entries of this blog :)
Every time I called Ben or my mum, they'd pick the phone up saying 'You ok?! Is he coming?! Where are you?!!'. I'd have to start texts by saying 'Hi, don't worry, not in labour!'. And whenever I got the slightest twinge of pain, said 'oof!' when I sat down on the sofa or 'aah!' when I felt the baby kick, they'd look at me and raise their eyebrows as if to say 'Is it time?'. The night before my due date, I said goodnight to my mum and went upstairs to bed. I came down about 5 minutes later to get a glass of water and heard my mum say to her boyfriend 'Oooh, she's coming downstairs, something's happening!'. She was a bit disappointed when I told her I was just thirsty!
I woke up every morning feeling a bit grumpy that nothing had happened in the night. I was having so many braxton hicks contractions, I started not bothering to tell anyone when I felt them as I was so sure they were fake.
I had the 'show' on Saturday 30th March - 2 days after my due date. I went totally mental with excitement and called my mum, relieved to finally have something to tell her. I was about to go out for breakfast with Ben at the time, and wasn't sure whether to still go or not. It was a good thing I did in the end, because absolutely bugger all happened all day after that. Or the next day, or the day after. The 1st April came and went, so I lost my own bet there. I started getting pretty wound up. Where the hell was this baby?! Every birth story I'd heard had started with the show, followed quickly by first stage labour. It had been 3 days of diddly squat. My induction date was on Friday 6th, but that seemed like a million years away...
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