It's been twenty years and I am starting to lose confidence.

Anyone else think this is starting to be a bit much?

A few weeks (years?) ago, when I passed the 37 week mark, my midwife and I joked about how I'd go to 41 weeks and she'd have to induce me. We both laughed. It is beginning to seem distinctly less funny now.

Monday night I felt so awful I called my midwife literally in tears. She sympathized and we agreed that yes this was miserable but no I was not in labor. Yesterday, she told me that since I was still pregnant I should come in--holiday weekend and I shouldn't go over a week without being seen, plus "If you're walking around at seven centimeters, that's dangerous, because you might not make it to the hospital in time." Fair enough, since best case it would take me 40 minutes to get there and that's if I'm not home alone with the kids, which I am most of the time. So I called MHH to come home and I took a cab there last night to find out that I have dilated NOT AT ALL since Friday. All these contractions? Doing NOTHING. I took the train and the bus home. In the dark. And the rain. (While texting Cecilia in Australia. Have I mentioned lately that I am beginning to see the appeal of text messaging? Definitely makes the commute more fun.)

She (midwife, not Cecilia) asked me if I wanted to move things along and reluctantly I said no--because really, there's no good reason to do it. The baby B"H seems fine and I am not even at my due date yet. Just because I feel two weeks late is not a reason. Tomorrow and Friday are holidays so I don't have to work and my husband will be home in the afternoons, so very easy days for me; then it's the weekend; then Monday is my due date so if I want to go off work then I can, even if I haven't had the baby yet. Which, at this point... it's getting hard for me to even imagine going into labor at all. I've been feeling exactly the same since the end of October. I'm having what feels for all the world like a real honest-to-goodness early labor contraction--starts in the back, moves forward, lasts half a minute or so--right now.

And yet, we are STILL HERE.

Stay tuned. By Chanuka, right? Pesach for sure.