A Last Day
Lately Desdemona has been working on the art of negotiation. Her specialty is leveraging the phrase "last time" to get something she wants, one more time. The funny thing is, she often resorts to "last time" before she really needs to. I'm sure she'll fine tune it in the coming months. Sometimes she says it in this adorable way where she takes a big breath and looks waay up at the sky to say "last" and and then dramatically nods forward for the big finish: "TIME." I should try to catch that on video.
Anyway I have "last time" stuck in my head today because it's a last day for me. For the whole family, really. Today is Thursday, and I have an induction scheduled for 7:30am on Monday. Today is the last day I get to stay at home while Desdemona is in daycare and work, craft, do chores, relax, or whatever else I want. By the start of the next daycare day, I'll be working on having our second baby. And after that, there will probably be a year or so before my next quiet day at home, courtesy of daycare.
It's the perfect day for this. It's softly snowing outside, which kind of makes me think the baby will come on his own, before Monday. (Desdemona was born in that blizzard after all.) I've been on a cleaning rampage this week, so there aren't too many chores to do. I've been running in top gear at work, transitioning my responsibilities so that everything is covered in my absence, so there aren't too many work tasks to do. I'm working from home and so is Nick, so we're hanging out, but not too intentionally. I have a satisfying knitting project to finish (weaving in ends and an I-chord for Desdemona's Christmas Stocking). And I feel good. I feel ready.
Of course there's a bitterness in knowing this is the last time, for a while. And a bizarre-ness, too if I'm honest. When I was 38 weeks + 3 days with Desdemona, I didn't know if I'd be having her in a day or a week or even 3 more weeks. None of my prenatal care providers were in any hurry to see me go into labor, although I myself was desperate to not be pregnant anymore. This time, all of my care providers are REALLY in to the idea of inducing me on Monday (39 weeks even) and I feel like I could go for another week or two with no problem. The knowing in advance is nice. It's convenient. I can get my affairs in order and prepare. But the knowing in advance is strange. I feel worried about possibly rushing the baby out before he's ready, I feel nervous about my body resisting induction and ending up having interventions I don't want. I feel ambivalent about the end of what's probably my last pregnancy.
But I haven't called the hospital to push back my induction. None of my uh-oh feelings seem to be enough to convince me that I really shouldn't go through with this. So today is a Last Day. And Monday (maybe Tuesday) will be quite the First.