yesterday morning I woke up at 5am with painful contractions. they started at about 5min apart, each lasting a little less than 2min. I had experienced several painful contractions a few nights before which amounted to nothing much after a few contractions, so I decided that I'd wait to make sure this was actually the real deal. we waited 4hrs and watched my contractions get closer and longer and more intense before deciding to head down to the hospital, because the worse feeling at this point would be to get turned around because all this pain is for naught. right before I left the house, I used the washroom and had a rather large bowel movement (sorry peeps), and then... as we drove down to the hospital, I could feel my contractions begin to space out and lower in intensity. bowel movement screwed up my progress. by then we were already checking in and waiting for the nurse to access my situation. she checked me, not dilated. monitored my contractions, only one came and it wasn't intense enough on the richter scale. she informed me that we'd been had by false labour. false labour. words I did not want to hear.

I then proceeded to my obs appointment and went through the annoying process of waiting to actually see my obs, all the while becoming more and more impatient with the amount of babies and young children running around the waiting room, feeling like tears were just damming up behind my eyes. the injustice of it all kept building up in my head.

for the rest of the day, I could barely pull myself together. my hope had just been dashed upon the rocks of false labour, exploding into a million pieces of disappointment. and then it sank even deeper. unfortunately for someone like me, this sort of disappointment neighbors my good friends grief and loss, and when disappointment explodes, grief and loss get pulled into the mess of destruction. dashed hope reminds me of loss. no baby yet bleeds in my ear as a reminder of who is not here.

having this child is like peeling my heart raw, letting it pulsate openly with the hopes that fullness and joy would result, which I understand will still happen whenever first-class baby fills my arms, but with this exposure, much risk is taken in also laying feelings of grief and loss bare. such is the depth of disappointment something like false labour brings about for someone who has lost their first child.

near the end of the day, we took a quiet drive to abel's gravesite and pondered a while. it brought the closure I needed to the end of an emotionally and mentally exhausting day.

first-class baby will come, I know. it will be wonderful, I know. it may take longer than I had hoped, that's okay. I'm very thankful that first-class baby is very healthy and seems to be quite happy, I am. but there are moments where I a little pouring out of my heart is necessary and I believe, healthy. here's to the next set of contractions and hoping that it's the real deal.

love

sometimes love looks like getting toenails clipped and painted red by my guy who has never done either, simply because he wants me to feel better. for the past nights love also looks like getting my itchy belly treated with a cold compress, and then moving both of us to sleep on our sofas because that's the only place that I can sleep relatively comfortably. I'd like to note that he doesn't have to sleep on the sofa too, but he does. I'm thankful for the major part he plays in keeping me sane during these, hopefully, last days. I go in to see my doctor tomorrow, hopefully he uses words like dilated and soon.

rash

been feeling rather sleep deprived because it's just become harder and harder to find a comfortable position that will last me more than 1 hour. and for the past week, a new rash has made it's home on top of my stretch marks. it. is. so. itchy. in addition to hip pain, acid reflux, and frequent urination, I now have another friend to wake me up in the middle of the night. the placement of this friend is right at the bottom of my belly, underneath my large bulge, and therefore hard to reach to itch, because that's just how awkward my body is now. rash friend, you are ridiculous. I have taken a comb and sharp edges of lotion bottles to scratch this itch. I know, it's kind of funny, but at 2am, 4am, 6am, I just want to scrape my friend off.

this seemingly little irritation has proved enough to push me over the edge. I wake up sobbing in frustration because I just can't understand the purpose of this rash. hip pain helps get the baby out, acid reflux is an unfortunate side effect of baby growing but can be fairly easily remedied with gaviscon, and frequent urination means baby is moving down. but a rash? seriously? is this a joke? and in those dark, dismal hours of the night, I feel like I'm being played. and I feel angry. and I take it out on rash friend with a comb.

today I just sat there in a tired haze, throwing some angry words at God, feeling so very sorry for myself, convinced that Someone was holding out on me... which slowly turned into pangs of sadness and a stretch of time where I had nothing else to say. I am no less comfortable, rash friend is still present, and I'll probably keep having my little melt down days, but I feel less alone. I still have a lot to learn about surrender.

update

first-class baby is still enjoying first-class service.

also, maybe because my size is hard ignore, but it seems the closer I get to delivery, the more jokes I get about my very-pregnant state. sheesh.

and finally, I don't know exactly how normal labour feels. my water broke without much warning with abel and then I got induced because my membranes rupturing (now there's an image) didn't actually kick start anything. so I know how intense, labour pains feel, but I don't actually know how gradual normal labour feels. for all I know, I AM IN LABOUR RIGHT NOW. yes, that's what we'll go with.

people: how long were you in labour for?
me: oh man, it was like 2 weeks long!

now there's sympathy.

longing

and now witness the deterioration of deb's mental coping skills.

the other night I had an unraveling moment that spanned into my bedtime and made it's way into the frame of mind I woke up with. I feel grumpy is what I told my husband. I then proceeded to list my complaints and frustrations. his attempts at trying to help me solve my ailments were firmly dampened when I discerned for him that this was one of those please just listen to me moments.

before we got into bed to sleep, my husband stood in front of our photos of abel in our room and as he gazed reflectively at abel's face, I realized something.

since abel passed away, I've been waiting. the day my arms went empty, I've been longing to experience the feeling of having them full again. initially, our doctors told us we'd have to wait for medical reasons before trying to have another child. at the time, I wasn't even emotionally able to fathom another child, but the emptiness in my arms remained. as we trudged through the grieving process and began to feel a sense of restoration, the thought of having another child re-entered our minds and soon after we got the green light from our doctors, I entered the waiting game of when I'll actually be pregnant again. when will there be a child again in my arms? 11 months after abel went to heaven, I found out another child was on the way and the end to my waiting was now foreseeable.

9 months later, I sit here, feeling so close to the end, yet so agonizingly far, I am constantly fighting my impatience. I've been waiting so long, can the wait be over soon? is what keeps popping up in my mind. these empty arms have been ready and waiting for a while. it's a complex combination of remembering how it felt to hold abel and longing now to hold first-class baby.

in an unexpected way, recognizing these factors helps me put my thoughts into perspective. if only it would induce labour, then I'd be set. happy full-term day to first-class baby. I long to meet you.

consumed

in less than two days, first-class baby will be considered full-term, 37 weeks in utero. in less than three days, I will be passing into the next year of my life. reaching full-term is completely eclipsing my birthday. I hardly even remember it's going to be my birthday. all my thoughts are consumed with when will first-class baby's birthday be?

the combination of the general public constantly asking me how I'm feeling, when the baby's due, do I know the sex of the baby, and my continual twinges, internal twisting, all compliments of first-class baby, doesn't exactly help me "keep my mind off of when the baby will come". I keep jumping between "look baby, I'd really like to just get on with this delivery business" to "these last days with abel in me were so precious, I need to really embrace these days with first-class baby", my emotions feel a little fried from it all. I'm impatient and tired in one moment, then struggling to find contentment in another. throw a little bit of insomnia from hip discomfort and acid reflux, and month 9 pregnancy hormones, and it's a wonder I can properly sew cloth diapers.

in the end, it'll all be fine and we'll all look back and scoff at my ridiculous impatience, but currently, the end does not exist. IT JUST DOESN'T EXIST.

passing

confession: sometimes I sit next to a stranger in complete silence because I am more concerned about conserving my own mental energy than taking the passing opportunity to perhaps cross someone's path in a meaningful way.

last week I sat in a room for hours and for the first little while, I purposely avoided eye contact with the person sitting next to me because I just felt tired. I was trying to stay positive about the wait, trying not to focus on how much work I wasn't achieving, and therefore felt I had no extra emotional energy to chit chat.

finally after a long time, the person sitting next to me broke the silence and started a conversation asking me about my large pregnant belly. I gave half-hearted responses, still hoping I could spend most of my time in silence. we kept talking.

person: is this your first?
me: no, this is my second.
person: oh that's nice.
[pause]
person: how old is your first?
me: he would have been 1 and a half by now, but he actually passed away 5 days after birth.
person: oh... I'm so sorry.
me: it's okay. I'm glad we got those 5 days with him.
person: oh.
[pause]
person: what happened?
me: well, we actually found out in our 18 week ultrasound that he had a severe chromosome defect that caused his brain to not halve. the doctors didn't know if he would even make it to full term let alone live after birth.
person: oh wow... that must have been hard.
me: it was tough, I remember laying there in the ultrasound room thinking, the biggest decision I made today was what to have for lunch, and now I'm given the option to terminate my pregnancy.
[pause]
person: so has that changed the way you view these kinds of things?
me: well... I went into that situation with a certain ideal and view thinking that I would always choose a certain way when presented with the choice, but when it came down to it, it wasn't like that at all. what probably struck me the most at that moment was that... this was a life. and this life, is beyond me. I can't decide to terminate this life like this. and when my son, abel, was born I was struck again with the fact that his life was beyond my control. just like how I couldn't terminate his life then, I couldn't artificially sustain his life now. I think it really impacted the way I view life.
person: yeah, that totally would.

after conversing more in depth, this time with me asking the questions, turns out this person lost a child who was only 10 weeks old in utero. I listened to her express her journey. shared about my journey. it was a meaningful conversation. I almost missed it.