My friends, I solemnly swear: no more searching YouTube for childbirth videos. I just watched one that has me crossing my legs and grimacing sympathetically at its up-close footage of a freshly cut mediolateral episiotomy pouring blood. Eek eek eek. Have you seen this one, though? Love it. Grab a tissue -- the first time I saw it I wasn't even pregnant and it left me weeping.
This afternoon we went to confession together, all six of us. The little guys took along some things to do while they were waiting for us to get through the line, and it went swimmingly. Our parish almost always has long lines for confession, and I was sure they would be huge today since it's the last Saturday before Christmas. When Elwood got home a bit later than planned from running errands (he made an extra stop on one of the craziest shopping days of the year, because he remembered that I was out of red raspberry leaf tea and picked some up for me even though he thinks herbs are a bunch of hooey -- love that man), I suggested that we go to the next-closest parish instead. It was a good call, in part because the pastor there, who wound up hearing my confession, is an especially kind man. I brought up my birth anxiety, which I know is partially normal but which is also partially a control-freak thing, like God needs me to worry about things for him and thus I can interpret "cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you" as "tie yourself into vibrating knots of stressballness and make the people around you miserable."
He had some good advice for me, and a helpful penance, and he said, "May the birth be better than your highest hopes, and as far as possible from your worst imaginings."
Afterward we went to our neighborhood bubble tea shop, which is a cozy place with shelves of games and books. The older boys each grabbed a book, while the younger boys worked a puzzle with Elwood and me and then played a game of chess. (Watching a chess match between a 6yo and a 3yo is not an undertaking for the impatient.) Too often cold and snowy weekend afternoons dissolve into fractiousness, but this was a nice one.
Contractions are ramping up but I don't see them going anywhere this weekend. (Jody asked about the state of the kitchen floor -- it needs mopping.) I am SO grateful that I didn't have any pre-labor action until just recently. With Pete I had weeks of thinking, "Is this it? No. Is this it now? No. Maybe this time? Fooled again." No fun at all. But I can deal with another week or ten days of it. (I think.) And by the end of that window, I should have myself a baby. An actual baby -- imagine that.
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