progress

Finally! Progress is being made! Yesterday at my appointment (slightly squeamish readers, simply go make yourself a sandwich and come back to the next paragraph) I was 3+ cm dilated, and 50-60% effaced. This after being 1+ and 0% for two or three appointments in a row. My midwife stripped my membranes, and I was contracting regularly from about 2p.m. yesterday until 9:00p.m.

Then I contracted all through my sleep, surprisingly getting the deepest, best sleep I've had in months. And now I'm sort of stalling again, which is okay. I'm just so happy progress is being made. The contractions I've been having are awesome--awesome because they are strong enough and hurty enough that I know things are really happening, but also not so bad that I can't talk through them, and sometimes walk through them. I'm taking my midwife's advice and taking it easy, just resting on the couch and drinking water and eating good food. (Not so hard.) I'm excited to think that in a short time--whether it's hours or a couple of days--I'll be holding my daughter. Last night, Phill was like a little boy. He said, "I'm too excited! I don't know if I'll be able to sleep!"

We had a barbecue on Monday to celebrate the holiday, and invited several friends over. One neighbor (refer to previous post with story about Anonymous), whose boyfriend is in jail, is 6 months pregnant with her second. She's 19. She's very vulnerable and friendly, and I have to say I've grown very fond of her. I feel sort of like a mother hen saying that, as if I've taken her under my wing. But the truth is, I have very tender feelings for those mothers who don't have the husband/loved one's presence they need, whatever the reason. Deployment, jail, estrangement....no matter the reason, I feel very particular empathy. Anyway! So my neighbor was at our barbecue. Six months pregnant, and as her nearly-three-year-old reached around her mother's neck to hug her, the chair said mother was sitting on broke, taking baby and mother to the floor with baby's knee digging into mother's side....she was in a huge amount of pain, probably having pulled a muscle or stretched a ligament in trying to catch herself and her daughter. But then her baby--the one in utero, a boy--wasn't moving for an entire hour afterwards. I took her to the hospital. (Neighbor's boyfriend wrecked their car in a drunken stupor long ago--they've been without a car for months. His mother is usually their means of transportation. She was enjoying Memorial Day weekend in Vegas.) After an hour and a half, during which the nurse was trying to find a Doppler that worked and tending to a pregnant woman kicked in the stomach by a horse, we finally were able to find the baby's heartbeat. And he finally moved. It was definitely a strange night, especially after such a fun day. But all is well, mother and babies are doing well. It was funny to walk into Labor & Delivery with my 39-weeks-plus belly and reassure the nurses that I was not the one needing the tending. And it was a little funny to be in there and not be in labor. I felt almost like I was a robber casing the joint. I did, however, have a huge highlight to that little incident. Wheeled past me was a peacefully sleeping, perfectly tiny, bundled baby boy. I smiled at his father, who was at the helm of the plastic bassinet. The smile on his face could have lit up a dark house.