Nine Months and in a Formal Dress

We made it to the wedding last night! Chris was adorable in his tux, and I was reasonably cute in my dress. It was a good thing I only bought it two weeks ago, because even in that short time it was already becoming too tight for me. Chris spent half the night pushing the ill-fitting straps back up on my shoulders.

I’m glad I didn’t have a month or three in advance to pick out a dress, because there is no way I could have predicted exactly how my body would change. I would have had to arrange to have a dress on hand that would be altered at the last minute, which would have cost a small fortune. It was so much better just going for something off the rack, shoulder straps be damned.

At the event people kept asking me about my due date, and kept being surprised when I answered “nine more days”. I have gained between 35 and 40 pounds, which puts me at the heavy end of the scale of expected weight gain. But apparently enough women either start out overweight or gain way too much, so I appear to be on the small side despite feeling like a hippo.

One older woman was so concerned that I might spontaneously go into labor that she mentioned repeatedly that there were a number of doctors in the room, and even turned to her friend to ask if her cardiologist husband would be able to help should the need arise. I couldn’t help but laugh! Perhaps she had never been through childbirth herself. I’m pretty sure labor doesn’t hit you like a speeding bus in a fog-bank; and Chris and I were both quite prepared to quietly sneak out and drive home should my contractions get regular. And I don’t think a cardiologist would know any more about emergency delivery than a pregnant woman who has read up on the subject. (And really, it’s not that complicated.)

And I have been having contractions, I’m fairly sure. The last few days I’ve had no end of funny little crampy feelings, gas-like pains, and sharp little jabs like the baby is head-butting my cervix. The most convincing are these feelings of tightness that build up and hold across the lower part of my belly for ten or twenty seconds. They don’t hurt, and they aren’t regular, but I’m sure if I were to have told the paranoid lady she would have panicked and started yelling for the cardiologist to come work some sort of doctor magic on me.

I’m sure she would have been equally stunned if I had mentioned that I’m already dilated to 3 centimeters, or that the mucous plug had already fallen out. People in general seem to know more about pregnancy from the movies than from real accounts. They seem to think that I’ll start screaming at the first labor pain (I’m more afraid that I won’t realize I’m in active labor) or that it is typical for water to break and come out all at once before labor even begins (which is not only rare but is a sign that the baby might be in a dangerous position).

The baby has been in a proper head-down position now for the last month. His bottom goes dancing from one side of my belly-button to the other, and his foot sticks out of my right side. Chris loves playing with that foot, chasing the foot-lump around on my skin. I habitually rub it when the baby pushes. I’m curious to know if because of this the kid will end up with some sort of foot-fetish, or one foot more ticklish than the other.

I did decide to go European for the evening, and drank two-thirds of the champagne that I was given to toast with. I was a little afraid that I would be pestered by well-meaning folks not to touch the stuff. But really – in Europe, it is considered safe for a pregnant woman to have a glass of wine with dinner. I’m not about to get into that habit, but figure instead that a. the baby is past the stage of developing his internal organs, and b. some alcohol in my system could help repress labor should my body inconveniently decide it was that time. Alcohol was used as recently as the 70’s to stop early labor, and for all I know still is. I was born drunk for that very reason.

The wedding was wonderful! Our friends are now finally hitched, and they put on one hell of a party, complete with waves of fantastic food. I ate like a happy hippo, danced the horah (if slight bouncing can be called dancing) and stayed awake well past my bedtime. And then I slept beautifully.

Poor Chris, though – he was stressed by the drive into and then out of Boston, and then couldn’t sleep because he had had coffee at the end of the evening to stay awake on the road. But a day of rest today seems to have done him some good.