I'm Already Ready, Already

For the last few mornings I've woken up and realized that, to my supreme irritation, I feel great.

"Great" being a relative term, of course. The recent heat wave has exacerbated my carpal tunnel, which manifests itself as soreness in the middle fingers of both hands and makes me feel like a crotchety old woman paying her dues after a lifetime of flipping pesky little kids the bird. Walking further than half a block makes my back feel like it's going to give out, and the simple act of sitting down to pee in the middle of the night is more of an ordeal than ever because when I try to stand up again, my knees respond thusly: "AW HELL NO."

Despite all of this, my overall feeling this week has been one of good health. I'm nowhere near the crying, hysterical mess I was two weeks ago when, without warning, I collapsed in Scott's arms and moaned, "Everything hurts so much. I can't DO this anymore." Is this the last-minute burst of energy they always tell you about, where the day before you go into labor you get the sudden, uncontrollable urge to buff the house clean with a nailbrush? If so, it's gone on an awful long time.

I'm not the only impatient one, either. My mother and sister have taken to answering the phone with a breathless, "Hello? Hello?" Every time I call, expecting to hear that I'm on my way to the hospital. I know there are people who have been crossing their fingers that nature will take its own course before the doctors help prod me along starting tomorrow night. Looks like we're all out of luck in that regard.

The ironic thing about feeling so capable right now is that I literally have NOTHING LEFT TO DO. I actually planned too well. As a result, my hospital bag is packed, I've pre-registered at the hospital, the laundry has been done, the house is clean, the dogs are taken care of, there are groceries in the fridge for when we get home, and I've completed all my freelance work.

"Maybe I should buy some new underwear," I muse to myself as I play my 500th game of fetch with Pepper and idly surf Go Fug Yourself. "Like, some ugly granny ones I can throw away in a couple months. That's probably a smart idea." Then I turn over the idea of negotiating Target in my head, ultimately reject it, and decide that the granny panties I currently own will probably do just fine.

The induction process is an odd one in part because it's potentially so long. Unlike labor, where they urge you to hold off checking in for as long as possible so that you can hang out at your own house through the first phase, with an induction they are monitoring you for the entire process, and the process can run 24 hours or longer. When I check into the hospital tomorrow night, they will be inserting a balloon in order to begin the dilation process, and throughout the night I will simply be hanging out, waiting for it to do its job well enough to move to the second, more serious phase of labor, which is the point where I can demand painkillers without feeling like a total wuss.

This gives us an entire night to basically sit around and wait. Once Scott determined that I was not going to allow him to just go home and sleep until things started getting interesting, we came up with a gameplan of ways to pass the time. We're bringing cards for games of gin rummy, we've loaded up our iPods with podcasts, and we're downloading some TV shows to watch on his laptop. Knowing me, I'll probably wind up surfing the internet, posting to Facebook and various forums from my hospital bed, because that's how much of an internet addict I am.

"OMG nurse just said 4cm dilated! Water just broke all over the bed! They just gave me opiates! Sooooo excited, y'all!"

If you get a cracked out email from me at 2am Thursday morning, reporting facts about my uterus that you never, ever wanted or needed to know, this is why.

So that's it, people. If you don't hear from me again, you know where I'll be.