Anniversary contractions. Lovely.

In case you ever wanted to put a chill a romantic evening on your anniversary, let me tell you a quick way to do it. We'd planned to make dinner together and have a nice evening in, just the two of us (and our cat, of course). And then contractions started. So we spent almost four hours timing them, talking to the doctor, and trying to decide whether or not to go to the hospital (the doc left it up to us). By the end of the evening I was exhausted and the contractions started to spread out a bit, so we dragged ourselves to bed and crashed. The good news is, we (I) re-packed our hospital bags. They're much more organized now. :)

And the other good news is that in spite of the chill, it was a pretty good anniversary - I was re-affirmed in how much I love my husband even after seven years!! He made our anniversary dinner by himself, kept track of my contractions, reassured me, and prayed over our baby. He was totally calm and upbeat. I'm surprised by his calm, but pleasantly so. He said once that she'll be fine, and the "worst" case scenario is that we'd get to see her little face a bit sooner than we expected. And then he kissed my belly. I love that man.

So now that we're 34 weeks the doctor was much less concerned about preterm labor. He said they might not do anything to stop it at this point, though they'd obviously feel much more comfortable in a couple of more weeks. He also said that some women just have contractions. "They don't seem to deliver, they just have a lot of contractions." My response? "Lucky me."

The other scary thing about last night was that my heart was reacting strangely to the contractions - I've felt them in my chest for a while, but last night it was clear that my heart was beating much harder during contractions, and sometimes it felt like it was skipping. The doctor said maybe they're just more painful... I don't know. It just seems weird. And my contractions haven't really been painful at all, just a bit uncomfortable.

Anyway, I think our plan right now is at least for the next couple of weeks for me to try to take it a bit easy, and try to keep those annoying contractions away. Once we hit May 19 (37 weeks), though, it's show time.

How I'm feeling... if you really want to know

When people ask me how I'm feeling, I am never quite sure how to respond, especially on days like today. Usually I just say, "Great!" or maybe "Really pregnant." I honestly don't think that people want to hear that my back is killing me, or that my breasts are aching, or that my feet and calves are swollen pretty constantly these days, or that my hips are so sore I can barely move in bed, or that I have to sleep sitting up at night lately because my heartburn is so horrible. I honestly don't think they want to know all that. But that's exactly how I feel.

It's not all that bad though... I have had a really great pregnancy so far, no serious problems to speak of. It's just this last bit that's getting to me. I'm trying to enjoy it, to savor the last few weeks of pregnancy: feeling her move, thinking about who she is in there, preparing for her arrival. But days like today make me feel like I'm ready to go as soon as we hit 37 weeks - which, by the way, is 3 weeks and two days... not that I'm counting.

I waddle.

All the time.

I can't help it.

Worse, what I really want to do is squat and waddle. It might look weird but it feels soooo good.