I quite fancied having a Halloween baby. I imagined her as a new-born pink little thing lying inside a pumpkin for pictures. And oh, the skeleton onesies, the baby zombie costumes! The fabulous birthday parties we could throw her later on, both Jo and I also dressing up, the fake blood and spiders and weird treats. We could invite her whole class and make the flat into a haunted house!
So I tried my hardest to relax on the day and even used my special birth-inducing Lush bath bomb, but Halloween came and went.
Fine, I thought, November 1st is a holiday in Belgium, that would be fun too, she’d always be off school for her birthday. Or the 3rd, she’d be a due date baby. Or hey, the 5th is Guy Fawkes Night in the UK, bonfires and candied apples and fireworks plus rebellion, I bet she’d love that! I went to a special yoga class the night before, ate a whole pineapple, and bounced on my yoga ball trying to get things going. But… nothing happened. No baby.
People’s reactions to ‘when are you due?’ ‘Last weekend!’ seem to fall in either of two categories, either it’s ‘Oh, first time mum?’ or ‘And you are still on your feet???’
I am. I’m still dragging my shopping onto public transport and standing up. I’m batch cooking meals and freezing them for those first weeks with baby. I’m cleaning some more, doing some odds and ends, but mostly we are ready now and it’s more about filling the time.
We went to the hospital yesterday for the ‘congratulations, you are overdue’ appointment. Luckily Baby Sunshine is still doing absolutely brilliant in there. She’s in the right position to be born, my placenta is healthy, and there is enough amniotic fluid left. Baby is super active as well, she was kicking so hard at the sonogram prod that it was hard to get readings!
I was massively relieved to hear that for now our gynaecologist is happy to follow our lead on this, have no interventions just yet, and let baby be born whenever she wants to be born. If I go into next week there will be more monitoring but we will deal with that if it comes to it.
There’s still my original guess of November 9th. Or the 11th is Saint Martin’s day in the region where I grew up, our version of Santa, where a holy man with a beard brings chocolates and toys, that might be fun. Or I might go all the way to the 17th, who knows!
The truth is that really, any date would be fine. I am okay with waiting for my body and baby to tell me when it is time for this to happen.
We’ll see :)
I’m glad you’re feeling more prepared now! It was kind of Sunshine not to rush you too much. ;)
Yes, right? I think it’s possible she could feel we weren’t quite there yet – both practically and emotionally – and therefore decided to wait a bit more. I’m grateful! But now she can start thinking about coming out ;)
Hi! I have been catching up after a few weeks of working myself into a stupor (do not recommend). I hope you and baby are doing wonderful. I have been thinking about you. ?
Baby has been born! It was a heavy couple of weeks waiting for her, but she’s finally here. I will update the blog tonight :) And that sounds hard, take care of yourself in-between all of that!