OK, so I made it to 40 weeks.  Whew!  Now the real waiting begins.  I got checked yesterday, and I’m about the same as last week, but a little closer to 4 cm than 3 this time!  So I’ll take it.  I’m up 33 lbs total, so it looks like I met my goal of staying within 35 lbs. of my pre-pregnancy weight.  I have another appointment set up for next Wednesday in the event that the baby still hasn’t come by then.  I don’t really have any predictions about when labor will happen.  I went 9 days past my due date with H, and looking back on it, there weren’t really any telltale signs on the day that I finally went into labor.  So I guess I’ll know I’m in labor again once transition starts:)

We are continuing to make plans, because why not?  We’re taking H to a friend’s birthday party tomorrow night, and then on Saturday we have brunch plans with friends.  I’m still planning on going to yoga on Sunday morning.  There’s no point in stopping all of these activities—except for work.  I’m really glad that I’ve taken the past 2 weeks to re-group.  I haven’t been sleeping well at night, and I’m uncomfortable all the time, and work was kind of making that discomfort worse.  Plus, having the time off has given me the chance to shift from thinking a lot about work to thinking a lot about our family.  And that is something that I needed to do, I think.

Holden has had his own share of anxieties about the upcoming addition.  His behavior was really pretty bad for most of March.  We attributed this to normal 3.5 year old developmental stuff.  But then the last few days of March he started asking whether March was over yet, and how many more days until April.  We asked him what was happening in April, and he said “My baby brother is going to be here, and I really, REALLY want it to be April NOW!!!”  He then talked about how much he wanted March to be over.  He’s clearly anxious in a good way, not a bad way, but even good anxiety and good stress can affect us negatively.  He then said something surprising—he said that he would be a grown-up in April.  We explained to him that he would still be a kid, and that he did not have to be a grown-up at all in April, or after his brother is born.  I’m sure that all of the innocent questions from other people about whether he’s going to be a big helper with the baby, etc.,  facilitated this view.  The funny part about this is that he didn’t seem stressed about the idea of being a grown-up—in fact, I think he LIKES the idea of being a grown-up.  He even told me that he doesn’t want to be a kid.  Even so, the prospect of that must be stressful to him on some level, which is why I think he was acting up so much last month.  I’m telling you, as soon as that calendar flipped to April 1st, we started seeing enormously improved behavior from him.  I think he was really anxious about getting to his brother’s birth month.  We’ve tried not to make too big of a deal about the new baby (even though it *is* a big deal), so we’d avoid this sort of thing.  But here we are.  I think it will be OK when the baby is here.  I think H will adjust very well.  I just think that the excitement of leading up to the birth (and not knowing what day it’s going to happen) is driving him a little  batty.  But hey, I know plenty of adults who can’t deal with the uncertainty, so it’s not that big a deal for H to be struggling with the ambiguity of it all.