pregnant life

i went to see my obstetrician yesterday (this will hopefully be the last visit). my cervix is now dilated “a good 2 cm” and 90% effaced. the baby is very very low — she said this is favorable for delivery. she thought that i would already have given birth last week. luckily, poko-chan was cooperative enough to stay inside quietly during our move to our new house last week. great work, poko-chan.

i’ve been having false labour pains since last sunday. usually they start around 4 or 5 am, an uncomfortable pain that wakes me up. at first, i was just having dull pain in my lower back. but on tuesday morning, i felt acute lower abdominal pain, as if someone stabbed me with an ice pick. i’d never had this type of pain before, so i grabbed my watch and started counting. the pain came and went a few times at an interval of 7 – 15 minutes. some were one minute long and others were two minutes long. they were irregular and stopped in an hour, so it was just false labour. poko-chan is practicing very well.

i tried not to fight against the pain because it just gets worse if you do so. i tried to accept it and observe how painful it’d get, then it was much easier to go through. i used to do this all the time in japan when i’d go see the dentist (japanese dentists don’t use much pain relief). if i think “aha~! this is how it feels like when you dig a big hole into your tooth”, the pain seems to be apart from my body, away from me somehow. after all, the body is just a box, you can take the mind out of it. i’m not sure if i can use this trick during my labour (i’m assuming i might not be able to…), but it would be nice.

my sister-in-law, mayumi, suggested that i should keep active during pregnancy in order to have a quick and healthy labour. i should probably listen to her, because her labour was really quick – only three hours or so even for her first baby. i took aqua-exercise classes until 36 weeks and since then, my exercise has been mainly cleaning and organizing stuff around the house. moving was slightly stressful, but it worked out okay since my nesting instinct covers all the cleaning.

paul and i set up our baby’s room — finally. we bought a second-hand cradle and a second-hand rocking chair. the cradle didn’t come with bedding, so i made it myself — another last minute project. i always end up wanting to make something right before a big event. i finished making my wedding dress the day before the wedding, for example…

it looks like my pregnant life is almost over (for now). i enjoyed it very much. i love watching my body transformation and imagining how poko-chan is growing. pregnancy seems to make people happy too. many people gave me a kind smile and helped me a lot (thank you those who sent me kind emails). some people (even some men) would touch my belly even without asking. i didn’t mind at all. it seems to me that pregnancy goes beyond social barriers and sexuality. i would probably be deeply offended if someone touched my breasts or bum saying, “they’ve got bigger!” , i’d give them a punch or two… and a kick. but around my belly, it was an oasis spot.