Still pregnant. Still contracting. My baby wants out and my body won't let him out. I've been in and out of labor for weeks. I've spent the night at the hospital with that monitor registering "labor" contractions every three minutes. I'm still having contractions. Strong contractions. Contractions that come 3-4 minutes apart for six hours at a time and then just stop. You have no idea how frustrating that is and how many nights I've laid awake wondering if this is it.
After I asked her outright after coming to the conclusion myself, my OB confessed to me that my baby is posterior. Which means he's faced with his face up instead of his face down. He's trying to get out but he can't get enough pressure on my cervix to throw me into active labor. Why she waited until 38 weeks to tell me this I'll never know because we're to the point now where there just isn't very much room for him to turn around. All of the hands and knees and birth ball rocking I'm doing is pointless. I know it's pointless. I'm doing it anyways.
I'm doing it because I haven't slept for more than a few hours in weeks. I'm doing it because I'm still holding out hope that he'll perform some miracle and I won't have to go through a major abdominal surgery next week. I'm doing it because I don't know what else to do. The septum in my uterus rears its ugly head again. It caused Renee to be breech and come out too early. It has caused this one sunny side up and coming out too late. I don't know how Cam pulled off his miracle but it is hard for me to not feel like my body is failing my baby.
On top of all of that I'm still working. I'm still required to be a mom and a wife and Santa Claus and the Advent calendar lady. Life in general is spiraling out of control...totally independent of the baby in my belly. My daughter has been throwing up since Thursday. She's pale and her eyes are sunken and my heart hurts to look at her. I wonder how much more I can take. I cry thinking about missing The Polar Express and about missing Renee's school program after they cut me open next week. I cry because this just isn't the way I wanted it to all go down.
But, at the end of the day, I know there isn't another way. I know that we have to get through it. I know that it doesn't matter how bad I want to crumble and break or how annoyed I am that the world continues to spin around me, I know that the best thing I can do is curl up on the couch with my sick girl and cry right along with her. Because after the last four and half years of doing this mom gig, there is one thing I know for sure.
This too shall pass.
