Ok, so technically I've been counting down for the last, oooo 35 weeks, but now we are only a month away from the due date! It seems like it has taken forever to get here, yet flown by so quickly at the same time. I find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that in a month or less I will be holding a life that we created. We'll be completely responsible for raising this mini-me and starting them off on the right track in life. I've thought about this moment for years and even at this point the magnitude of whats about to happen boggles my mind.
Being this close makes me wonder if every odd twinge or movement is going to lead into labour. Will my water break when I'm at the grocery store or having dinner with friends? Will I end up having contractions the day we head out of town for something? The month of January has us sticking very close to home, or at least not traveling more than an hour from the hospital. The OB has told me that it could happen at "anytime" which is exciting but also very vague. As a person who likes to plan things, the sitting around and waiting is excruciating. Its also become a lot more difficult to shut my brain off at night and actually sleep. A lot of unknowns lay ahead of me.
First of all there is the pain factor... I mean, its pretty obvious that labour and delivery itself are gonna hurt. How could it not? But to what degree? I was reading an article sent to me from babycentre.ca about what women didn't expect during labour and there were some who wrote "it hurt far less than I expected" and others who wrote "hitting yourself with a hammer for an hour is uncomfortable, but hitting yourself with a hammer for 15 hours makes you delirious"... (Note to future pregnant women, don't read these articles!)So I guess it ultimately depends on the baby's size/position as well as the mother's pain tolerance. Unfortunately for me, the baby has stolen any pain tolerance I once had. I know this because during my second trimester I cried while having my eyebrows waxed because it hurt so badly. For a normally tough chick, that was a point of humiliation.
I know there are ways of dealing with the pain, and by that we get into the great epidural debate. For the last month or so everyone has had an opinion on epidurals. Its tough to escape that conversation. There are those who had it and loved it, those who had it and hated it, those who wished they had had it and those who have had children with and without pain medication and say its a personal matter. Over the last nine months I've gone back and forth, almost daily, as to whether I'll join the bands of women who go for the pain free delivery.
The prenatal classes we attended were pretty big on anti-drug delivery and provided a long list of reasons why its better for baby. They almost guilt you into it. "You want the best possible start to life for your baby, don't you?" Research and videos they showed us back their arguments, but when it comes down to it, they aren't the one who is pushing out the baby. On the other side of the scale there is the thought that if you go for the epidural, the birth process will be less traumatic/stressful on the mother and a much more enjoyable experience overall.
Really, its going to be a decision that is made in the heat of the moment. Heck, for all I know my labour might progress so quickly that I won't even have the option of having an epidural. I guess we'll just wait and see.
