37 weeks!

We made it!!!  Full term.  Can you believe it?  After 10 weeks of couch potato rest this baby is finally considered full term.  Amazing.  It's hard to describe the range of emotions I'm feeling: elation, relief, apprehension, fear, impatience.  They roll around continuously as if daring me to chose one and stick to it.

Elation : I am thrilled we made it this far.  With Neil being born at 31 weeks, I never thought I'd make it past 35 weeks.  Sure, I'd heard the stories of women who'd delivered prematurely and their next child went full term, but given my history of being on the wrong side of percentages, I never actually believed I would be one of them.  So indeed I am elated.

Relief: that this baby (hopefully) won't spend several weeks in the NICU.  No travelling back and forth to the hospital ever day, not able to spend any private time with your newborn, always being at the mercy of the nurses and those darn machines!

Apprehension & fear: We've made it this far, nothing could go wrong now...right?  Right???  I am so terrified of losing this baby after I've done everything I can to keep him alive until now.  I feel like after all the struggles we've been through, it just isn't possible that something would go wrong again, right?  But that doubt nags at me, clawing it's way into my head whenever possible.  I try to push it aside and bring myself back to only positive thoughts and images, but it is oh so hard.

Impatience: Let's get this baby out already!!  I want to meet him, I want to hold him, I don't want to be pregnant anymore.  lol!  Having never made it this far in a pregnancy, I now totally understand what all those women in their 9th month complain about: aching bodies, peeing ALL THE TIME, exhaustion, crankiness, impatience.  I feel it all.  Plus the fact that I have painful contractions EVERY DAY, and nothing becomes of them is very frustrating.  I'll have contractions for 3 hours and I think, "this is it.  The time has come".  And then they subside.  The waiting is killing me!

Through it all, I always bring myself back to this: This is the decision we made - that we would try one more time.  We knew it would be difficult; we knew it would be emotional; we knew it would be a long 9 months.  But through it all, we knew it would be worth it - regardless of the outcome.  I knew I didn't want to wake up at 40 and regret not having tried one more time.  So whatever happens, I am happy we chose to go through this one last time, even if I am elated, relieved, apprehensive, fearful and impatient.