I try not to read a lot about childbirth and labor – I want to be informed but not over-saturated – but I happened to read today a BabyCenter journal entry from a woman about to give birth to her first child. She commented that she just had a false alarm: she thought her “bags of water” had broken, and she rushed to the hospital. The first thing I thought when I read this was, ‘How could she think her water had broken if it really hadn’t? Isn’t that something you should be able to tell pretty easily?’ (According to my mom-friends, it is!) The whole idea that something that major could happen (or not happen), and a woman could not know it (or get confused by it) is pretty scary (and intriguing) to me.

Of course, that made me think about labor in general – and how to determine when it’s really happening. I’ve recently experienced what I assume are Braxton Hicks (“practice”) contractions, and each time I feel them now, I wonder “Could this be it?” And, “How will I know if it’s the real thing or not?” Books and people assure me that I *will* indeed know (I assume the contractions will hurt – oh, about 100 times as much), but it’s hard not to worry a bit about it.

On a related note, I’ve felt (perhaps optimistically?) throughout my pregnancy that I would deliver early. But now that the date is closer, I don’t want to! I really just want to finish up my week at work and have a week or two to relax (sleep in!), finish up some things around the house and just *be.* We’ll see how that all works out…

-M

This entry was posted on Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 3:06 pm and is filed under 01.Pre-arrival. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.