Get it? See more Butt(ram)s? I want to, that is. Particularly the one curled against my bladder. Go ahead and marvel at my cleverness.
So on my side, we women tend to do things our own way (read: the RIGHT way…)(just joking)(slightly), and I think it’s fair to say that Bean is doomed.
And by that, I clearly mean I am the doomed one.
Doomed to watch today (her due date) come and go quietly and uneventfully. Sigh.
I’ve run into some people lately whom I haven’t seen in a few weeks – parents of Bug’s classmates, people at work…and it’s like I can read their immediate thought as if it were stamped on their collective foreheads when they see me. “She’s STILL pregnant?!”
Every time I wake up between eleven o’clock at night and seven the next morning (about fourteen times to use the bathroom), I take mental inventory of my body – is she moving? Am I in any sort of labor pain? Do my stomach muscles feel unusually tight? Did my water break? Wait, was that…was that a contraction? (Turns out it’s usually gas.)(Just so you know, pregnancy = automatic loss of any semblance of modesty.)
I know (in my head) how lucky I am – for the most part, the months flew by, without complications, without any of the necessary evils of being pregnant aside from the obvious side effect called “baby weight.” (Later to be called “toddler weight” when it refuses to go away.)
Even nine months pregnant, I’m not overly exhausted, or bed-ridden. Only the physical chores have gone neglected (while the kitchen floors are begging for a good, sound mopping, dirty laundry and dishes currently don’t exist in my house), and I still wake up relatively rested (though actually getting out of bed is a slow and slightly acrobatic feat).
And I try to keep reminding myself that this time next week, if still Bean-less, we’ll be preparing for an overnight stay at the hospital to start induction first thing on the 11th. And that the first couple of weeks after she’s born will probably prove more uncomfortable and exhausting than the entire past nine months have been. And that the fourteen three-minute wake-up calls in the middle of the night (hello, potty) will turn into thirty-minute feedings every two hours or so (morning, baby). And that a quick run to the grocery store won’t be so quick anymore.
But patience has never been my bag.
I want to cuddle her and smell her head and watch her sleep and kiss her toes and introduce her to literally everyone on the east coast. I want to see the product of our lifelines merged in that one little face, I want to witness, in the flesh, the obsession we’ve all had with her since September.
I want to hold my daughter.
Meet the Buttrams 