D-Day

26 May. Due Day. The day we've been waiting for for the last nine months has finally arrived, and so far, there's no indication that Baby Mitt is planning his/her trip out. The signs of eventual labor have shown up--less movement from baby as s/he has grown too large to have much freedom of movement left; baby's head has dropped into my pelvic region; gradual loss of the mucous plug; decreasing belly size as baby gets into position for take-off; and then, many other signs that while biological, are kinda graphic, so I'll leave them to your imagination. Some of you might still be shuddering from the mucous plug thing as it is.

For the last week and a half, I've been getting constant phone calls, e-mails, facebook posts, etc., asking me if "that baby has come yet?". Funny because all the books and all your female friends who've been through this before tell you that people will continually ask you a) if you've had the baby, b) why you haven't had the baby, and c) when you think you will have the baby. The only one of those questions I can definitively answer is a). As my midwife says, we all crap on our own time (no one asks you when you think you'll take your next poop, or expects it to happen on a certain timeline); baby will come on its own timetable, too. So I am content to wait. I will allow this little one to be a free soul as much as I've always tried to be one myself.

Lots of work going on in the house right now--Adam, sister-in-law Christine and friend Scott have completely demo'd the basement, gutting it of all paneling, partitions, walls, etc., so that now it's just one big empty shell. There was lots of mold on the materials they got rid of, but luckily, the mold hasn't appeared to do much travelling into the floor joists or permanent structures, so we've lucked out. Today they are scraping paint, bleaching the mold and eventually they'll paint all the walls with a mold-resistant white paint, which will brighten up the basement and deter new mold growth. Already, it's like an entirely different basement down there.

So for now, D-Day has arrived and we are happy about it, but not really spending a lot of time thinking about it. Although, this morning, I got up for my 5th trip to the bathroom, and unable to fall back asleep, I stood in the window and listened to the dawn chorus of birds, as they woke from their slumber and stretched their vocal pipes. I whispered to baby that the birds were singing for him/her on the expected day of arrival. I knew it was silly, but it made me smile anyway.

26 May. Perhaps not a day that will live in infamy or be a cause for ticker tape parades, but one that Adam and I will think about with fondness in the years to come. And for now, it's all up to baby...let the games begin!