I don't think overdue ever has a good connotation. If your library books are overdue, you get a fine. If governmental change is overdue, it means things went past the point of being okay a while back, and have, as a result, not been okay (see: recent US election).
So, here I am- officially overdue. 40 weeks and one day pregnant. I have to say, although I've taken a very open-minded approach to this whole pregnancy, not locking myself into any set ideas about anything, this has thrown me completely.
DH and I were both early babies- I arrived at 36 weeks, 2 days, and he arrived at 37 weeks. Of seven kids born to our collective families, only one has arrived after their due date. You could safely say there's a pattern there. Right from the start, we saw the due date as a sort of upper limit of possibility- the date by which we knew with absolute certainty that we'd have the baby.
But no. Clearly, as many have pointed out to me, this is the wee girl making her first stand at stubbornness. She's obviously pretty happy in there, and not too fussed that I can't sleep at night and have to spend all day trying to find comfortable positions to sit. She hasn't dropped at all, and beyond the ubiquitous Braxton Hicks contractions, there's no sign she'll be arriving anytime soon. I'm going to the doctor this afternoon, and she'll book me into the hospital to be induced next week (this must be the ultimate hurry-up for the kid- she then has a race to get here *before* I reach that day).
It's driving me bananas. I know I'm only one day over, but like I say, we were so sure she'd be here early that I feel about two weeks overdue already. And I've heard it all- be patient, she'll come in her own time, etc etc; I've done all the old wives' tales, too. It's not going to take away the frustration. I think that's partly because I have no real idea how much my life is going to change once she arrives- at the moment I'm just waiting, happily floating along in life-as-I-know-it. I bet that once she's here I'll wish this time had stretched out longer (and plenty of people have told me that, too, but how do you think they all figured that out? That's right, by doing it themselves) but for now- crazy.
Anyway. In the meantime, I'm finding it so hard to concentrate on writing that I'm not achieving anything. Though I did manage to write one little scene of the gothic WIP as part of my punishment (cough) on Mission: Accountability for overestimating how much writing I'd get done a couple of weeks back. And it really did feel great to write something again- to put the words on the page without worrying about them, then to go back through and make a tweak here or there until it read the way I wanted it to... Yes, the spark is definitely still there. I'm going to try to see this delay as an opportunity to get myself a little on track- every day I'm overdue is another day I can try to get back in the writing groove before the world changes. That's one way to turn it into a positive, right?
My copies of The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road arrived yesterday- books two and three in Pat Barker's WWI Regeneration trilogy. I read the first, Regeneration, a few weeks back and was absolutely blown away by her magnificent writing and sparsely drawn but incredibly effective characters. Along with the numerous other blog posts I'm thinking of writing (hmm!), I'm going to do a couple soon on the various fiction and non-fiction books I've used for information and to get into the groove of my novel's time and place over the last few years.
I figure the more things I plan to do, the more likely it is I'll go into labour when I least expect it (g). Oh, and I've also found a few different blog sites where people have complained about being overdue, and have promptly gone into labour a day or two after posting. If it works, I can chalk it up as a new one for the list of old wives' tales! Wish me luck.
Excerpt from Between the Lines
A memory wavered into his mind, shimmery as heat rising off the road in summer.
He was six years old, and he’d been in Stonehaven no more than a week. He was hollow and lonely, confused. He missed the bustle of Melbourne. He missed the other kids on his street, the whole gang of them and their scampy games. He was stuck out in the bush, all of a sudden, with nobody but Lionel for company. Lionel had spent the first day ignoring him completely, and the last few beating the stuffing out of him whenever he got the chance. So that day, he’d wandered out to the back garden, if it could even be called that- just a scrubbed, flat expanse of hot red dirt with a veil of tangled trees and shrubs behind it.
The bush.
On impulse, he’d taken a couple of steps toward it, bare feet burning on the hot ground. The air was filled with the lemony scent of eucalyptus and the fresh tang of the distant sea. He'd filled his lungs and the two steps had turned into six, then ten, then before he knew it he was running headlong toward the wall of whispering green and brown, pushing all his mother’s warnings about snakes and savages from his head. He barrelled between the first spicy-scented leaves and, to his surprise, popped out on a sort of beaten down track, hidden from view of the house. After a moment’s pause to wonder how many strokes of the belt he’d get for this, he set off down the track toward the most interesting noise he’d heard so far- the babbling giggle of flowing water, and laced in with it, the high, clear notes of a girl’s voice, singing.
He stepped off the track with his heart hammering in his chest, suddenly terrified as he caught side of the wide river bank and the rolling mass of glassy green water.
She was standing there, all right- a girl not much taller than him, skinny as a rake, skin the golden brown of tree bark lit by sun. A cascade of golden curls rolled over her shoulders to skim at her waist, tendrils flicking out here and there as she drew back her arm and lobbed a big rock into the water.
He watched it go, traced the arc with his eyes until it hit the water with a loud splash and was swallowed. She was singing, still, her voice high and clear. She was wearing a white dress that finished at her knees and puffed into short sleeves at her shoulders. He looked down at himself, his grey shorts and jumper coated in jam, dirt and everything else he’d been busy with that morning. He stared at her back with suspicion. She was pristine. The only dirty bit of her was her feet, bare as his.
If it hadn’t been for those feet, he might have thought she was an angel. Or a ghost.
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5 comments:
Claire,
Not to be risque, but there are certain *things* you can do to move things along. It definitely worked for us. (g)
Good luck - my sister is due on Sunday, and is 60% effaced and 2 cm dialated. The baby is in position and we are all on stand-by!
Good luck! :)
Yes, I know all about all of those methods (g). Sometimes you just have a super, super stubborn kid, evidently. And I'm still here, so that scotches the blogging-as-induction-technique idea (wg).
Hello, Claire!
All the best to you and your little one.
My son was a week overdue, and it was summertime, every day was over 30 degrees. I know that uncomfortable, overripe feeling. At least he dropped - you must be having a really hard time breathing. Is she a very big baby?
Anyway, I just wanted to chime in with my understanding and fond rememberings.
Try eating some prunes, if you haven't tried that (cough) avenue already. Some swear by it.
Me, I was induced. (G)
Claire,
No advice for you, just wanted to say I feel for you. I can't imagine being overdue. My first came almost three weeks early and my second was delivered via c-section at 39w2d so I always knew the end was near.
Christy
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