One day you’re in, and the next day you’re out. If you watch Project Runway, you’ll recognize this as one of Heidi Klum’s overly-repeated phrases. But the same is true of a baby, right?! I can’t quite believe it was only a year ago that this photo was taken (the last one of my sister-in-law and I both preggers), just three days before Tate was born.

In the final weeks of pregnancy, I was waiting for my discomfort level to eclipse my nervousness about childbirth and becoming a parent. I finally got there, as you can tell from the super-flattering picture. Could I be any more puffy?!

But while I was ready to have the baby, I assumed that I’d go at least until my due date (that next Saturday), or probably later. First babies are always late, right? Plus, I’m over six feet tall, so the kid had plenty of room to stretch out in there. It didn’t really seem like I’d dropped yet, and I hadn’t had any Braxton-Hicks contractions. On Monday I went to work as usual, and went to a jewelry party at my friend’s house that night.

Around 4am on Tuesday, I realized that my water had broken. I went back to bed and told my husband, and we both tried to get a little more sleep (guess who was more successful?). My contractions started at 6am and I started timing them with my alarm clock. I got up at 7 to send some emails to the office, but also sort of thought maybe I’d go into work to kill some time. Because again, labor is long and slow with first babies…

Both our doula and our Bradley instructor had recommended eating a good meal once labor began. So with a bowl of yogurt, fruit and granola balanced on my belly, I called my mom and our doula with the news. I finished adding final items to my hospital bag and took a shower to keep the contractions going (more doula advice). And not just a shower, but I decided to shave my legs. Turns out bending over to shave is VERY difficult during contractions. Probably not very safe either, in retrospect.

My husband got up at 8, glad to have gotten a full night’s sleep before his long day (hopefully just one day?) as labor coach. While he’d been pretty laid-back throughout the pregnancy, he was suddenly very concerned that we didn’t have the balance ball recommended by our doula for labor. He wanted to run out to Target, despite my protests that women had labored for thousands of years without balance balls and I’d probably be fine without one. 

As the contractions suddenly started getting much closer together, I finally convinced him that he shouldn’t go to Target and also could he please get me a bowl? My big breakfast wasn’t feeling like such a good idea anymore. I was picturing a nice large mixing bowl; he returned with a cereal bowl, wondering what I needed it for. We weren’t quite a finely-tuned labor-partner machine yet…

Wow, this post is becoming very long- thanks for sticking with me! I think it will have “to be continued”…