Yep, still pregnant

Sylvia was two weeks overdue and had to be shown the door before she'd make her entrance to the world. Thus, it's not all that surprising to me that I'm still pregnant the day before my official due date (and a week before the early ultrasound-based due date, which is the one I consider more accurate).

Apparently I'm about the only one, though. Even though I'm still small enough people are surprised to hear I'm just about due (and I'm definitely bigger than I was with Sylvia) a number of people expressed surprise to see I'm still pregnant--like the due date is some deadline and I should have given birth before it or something.

Unless I'm needed in primary, I think I'm going to skip next week. I could go around educating everyone I talk to about how only about 40% of women go into labor naturally before their due date, and only something like 67% before a week after the due date, but really, I get tired of the glassy-eyed stares and the quick exits to more mundane conversation. I know people are just making conversation and there's no actual meaning to their supposed astonishment at the continuation of my gravid state, but I'm a weirdo and I have this awkward tendency to take small talk too seriously.

Who knows, perhaps tomorrow I'll have my baby boy. I see the doctor again tomorrow, and perhaps stimulating my cervix will actually do something this time. I saw her last Thursday, at which point she stimulated my cervix. Later that evening, while walking through the SD zoo with Sylvia, Derrick, and a friend and her kids I had one good contraction that reminded me that yep, labor's painful. It was a really long contraction, too--we'd just gone into the Panda exhibit and the contraction lasted pretty much the whole time I was walking through. Admittedly, it's a pretty short exhibit, but I did take it slowly because I was in pain. Other than that I've had some contractions, but they've all been pretty weak and I'm guessing aren't doing all that much for me.

Ah well. One of these tomorrows I'll meet my little boy. In the mean time, I'm doing my best to enjoy the last few days (or weeks) of our family having only three people in it. Sylvia's excited about her brother, or at least about his arrival (she keeps telling people her brother will come out and then it'll be her birthday). This week we did spend a few good, quality evenings together as a family. Monday night I picked up Derrick and we got good Mexican food for dinner, then ate it at a beach in La Jolla. Sylvia wouldn't go into the water on her own (which was probably a very good thing at that beach. I don't think I've ever seen a beach as steep as the one we were on, and the waves were correspondingly powerful--probably too much for a small child) but she loved holding on to one of us as we dunked her into the oncoming waves. I was grateful my bikini still fit (though I look like a bloated, pasty whale), but I got cold pretty quickly, so Derrick did most of the dunking. Sylvia would yell, "no, no, no!" as the waves would come in and try to climb as far up Derrick as she could, and then, after each wave passed she'd just grin.

Thursday we went to the zoo (as I mentioned earlier). I took a rather long nap that afternoon and didn't even wake up until 5:10, and then Sylvia had to be fed before we could leave to pick up Derrick (who had sore tendons in his knee from starting biking back up). We stopped at In n' out for dinner for the adults (which was subsequently shared with the kiddo anyway) and finally showed up at the zoo around 7:30. That only gave us about an hour and a half at the zoo, but the cool thing about being there that late is that a lot of the animals are relatively active about then. Other than the koalas that are phase-shifted specifically to let people see them move, I've never seen one active. Several were quite animatedly chewing on eucalyptus leaves when we went past there. The wombats were also moving around, which again, I've only seen sleep before. Sadly, being a diurnal primate myself, the light faded quickly past the point when I could effectively see much. Still, walking around with my family and with my friend and her family was very enjoyable. Sylvia was particularly excited, and spent much of the time shrieking like a happy little monkey. I think she would gladly have stayed at the zoo all night long.

Last night Derrick finally got to see what my belly does when the little boy decides to be REALLY active. He said it reminded him of the scene in Spaceballs where the alien jumps out of the guy's belly (which is ripped from the movie Alien, but whatever). Apparently Derrick did that before he was born, at one point causing his father to laugh so hard he fell out of bed. Since baby boy is currently up to the same antics, I'm going to go find a more comfortable spot to spend the rest of my evening!