WEEK ONE

Seven days ago, at 10:19 am, our sweet baby Elodie came into the world.

She is more perfect and precious to us than we could have imagined, and this first sleepy week has gone by in a blur of kissing and cuddling and gazing. Do you know how many hours can go by as you stare into the face of your sleeping newborn? I didn't. It's a lot.

Our house is full of love right now. I look at my husband transformed into a father and I melt. I look at my tiny baby, taking in the new big world, and I have no words.

She is next to me in her bassinet right now, making little cooing sounds, so I'll keep this short.

I love you my darling Elodie , here's to a million more weeks.

37 wks 5 days

Did I say 18 days? Let's amend that. Let's say more like 8.

My doctor told me today that on account of my polyhydramnios she doesn't want this pregnancy to go past 39 weeks. I'm heading in on Monday, and, depending on what my body tells her, she will schedule an induction for some day that week.

That's right, it's either my body kicking things off on its own or it's the doctor doing it for me, but either way, by next Friday, she wants this baby out.

There is an endpoint now. I almost can't believe it.

Actually, I can't believe it at all.

What to do with my last week of babylessness??

37 wks 3 days

Every strange sensation could be my waters breaking. Every twinge of pain could be labor starting. I am in a state of constant vigilance. I have no idea what it's going to be like.

I have no idea when it's going to start. We've got a few bets placed, a few favored days marked on the iCal, but we are and will remain in the dark until it happens. It could be any day. It could be tonight right after I post this entry. It could be Feb 10th when Jared starts teaching a brand new class at school. It could begin quickly when I am home alone with the dog and no car. It could start quietly in the night while I sleep. It could be initiated in a hospital bed with a slow drip of Pitocin, or in an operating room under the brightest lights.

But one way or another, presumably at some point during the next 18 days, it will happen. It has to, right? This baby that has grown from bits of me and bits of Jared will cease to be a squirmy, troublemaking part of my body and will become her own air-breathing, milk-drinking, sound-making little person. And Jared and I will cease to be just two happily married dog owners and will become a father and a mother.

It's the heaviest ordinary thing in the world.

36 wks 5 days

Today was a gorgeous sunny day.
It was also my birthday.
It was also the first day in ten weeks or so that I got to go out and sit in a cafe with my husband and eat a roasted veggie salad and drink a rosemary lemonade and have a salted caramel cupcake and I swear I had forgotten how genuinely marvelous these little things can be.

It was a revelation. The outside world, baby!

Bedrest is so over. This child can come anytime she wishes now. And until she does, I am going to eat at all the cafés. I am going to order all the fancy salads and cupcakes. I am going to sit in all the parks in the sunshine. I am going to take my dog on so many walks.

Happy birthday to me!

36 wks 3 days

Teddy bear and bassinet bumper are complete.

I guess that means our baby can be born now?

35 wks 6 days

Is this the final countdown?

No way to know for sure but: the dog has been groomed back to fluffy whiteness, the house has been cleaned, the rug and couch have been shampooed, the diaper genie has been assembled, the world's strongest and most infuriating sticker has been gruelingly scraped from the side of the crib.

Oh and my cervix is 100% effaced. So there's that.

I told my doctor today that I wanted "just one more week" and she said, "I wouldn't count on it." But WHO KNOWS? Everything in this pregnancy has been unpredictable. Nothing has gone according to those books I wasted money and Kindle space on. I would be no more surprised if this baby comes out looking like a donkey than I would if she were born next month, or tomorrow, or whatever.

My latest exotic symptom is thirteen (13!) pounds of weight gain over the course of the past 8 days, all of it in my legs, face and fingers. I'm so swollen I could barely hold the pen to write my thank you cards yesterday (not an excuse I know, I know). This is of course a sign of preeclampsia, but when they tested my blood pressure today it was normal, and my doctor was so distracted by what she thought might be a threatened cord prolapse that she sort of brushed off my concern (while she mulled whether or not to schedule me for an immediate c-section).

(How much abnormal pregnancy action can you pack into one paragraph?)

I'm going back in on Monday, then on Wednesday, if I am still with child...

I'm hoping I can hold out on labor until at least my birthday, which is the 16th (and a full moon.) But is it a blessing or a curse to have a baby with the same birthday as you? Astrologically I mean of course...

Meanwhile I'm trying still to wrap my head around the fact that we may meet her very soon, but it's basically impossible to understand, so instead I am focusing on the concrete act of list making.

So here are some things we still have left to do before she arrives:

-Finish knitting this almost finished teddy bear
-Sew that confounded bassinet bumper
-Find a pediatrician
-Finish the thank you cards
-Oh and give the poor child a name

Some friends pointed out recently that if we wait until we see her face to name her, we'll be so emotional that we'll end up calling her Starshower Lovechild or something, so it's best to go in prepared. But holy Moses is it a tough call. Ideas welcome in the comments below...

34 wks 5 days

Today I saw a substitute doctor (because my OB is in Paris) for a quick check up. I gave him the twitter-sized summary of my pregnancy to date, he did his little exam, and, as he snapped off his gloves, said, "I'd say you've got about two more weeks."

Which, seeing how things have gone thus far, I'd say puts me at having a baby either this weekend, or a month and a half from now.

But just in case it really is two weeks or less, here is the actual To Do Before Baby list that I scribbled onto a pad of paper the other night after getting up to pee for the fourth time:

Groom Loki
Have rugs and sofa cleaned
Put a towel in car (in case water breaks en route!)
Wash windowsills
Write thank you cards
Make bassinet bumper
Hem curtains in nursery
Find pediatrician
Finish knitting bear
Write birth plan
Learn how to give birth
Learn how to take care of baby

Some of these things may just never happen. The curtains in the nursery may go forever unhemmed. I may stare at them while nursing my baby each night and curse their awkward length, but what can I do? Unless I can cart my 30 lb sewing machine into my bed sometime in the next few days, I'm thinking that's their fate. Sad I know.

Presumably I will get it together enough to write a bullet-pointed birth plan and hire a pediatrician and write some thank yous for the love of all that is good and holy, but that bassinet bumper that has been tormenting me since October? Do you think they will still let me bring home my baby if it remains unmade?

But craft projects and cleaning logistics aside, the idea that I might have an actual baby in the next few weeks? What am I supposed to do with that? Wrap my head around it?

I am pretty sure there is no to do list long enough and complex enough to get me to come to actual terms with this idea.