Labor Month

I will be 9 months (36 weeks) on Tuesday, meaning I have one more month left of pregnancy. I read a good article recently that talked about how the ninth and final month of pregnancy should be considered the "Labor Month", because even though there is a clear change when you ACTUALLY go into labor, in the month and/or weeks before this, your body is already starting to prepare for the event.

I really liked this article because it captured my recent feelings about what has been going on for me. I've been having all these contractions, starting to feel like I'm dilating, losing my mucous plug, having a lot of back pain, and most recently, felt the baby drop down and settle into my pelvis a lot more. So in some ways, as a first-time Mom, this all seems like signs that labor is imminent. Buuuuuut, they're really not.

The truth is that it takes your body time to warm up to the big event, sometimes a whole month. So even though all these signs look like they are pointing to me going into labor before 40 weeks, I'm trying not to hold my breath. Thinking of this month as my labor month seems like a good approach to help me accept that changes are happening, but that they are happening slowly.

With this being said, though, I'm also feeling a lot of pressure to get everything totally ready just in case. And we're getting pretty close. Last weekend we got a lot accomplished, so I'm hoping that this weekend will be another productive one, and we'll be all set to welcome James David whenever he decides to show up. Honestly, I've been feeling a lot of anxiety about the things we have yet to do--some more important than others--and I think that the more "ready" we are, the more relaxed I will be, which will serve for a much better birth experience in the event of his arrival, whenever that might be. So I'd rather be ready ahead of time and just have to wait for him rather than be scrambling around while I'm in labor wishing I wasn't!

So that's that--one month to go!