Due Date

I've spent nine months focusing on this one date, repeating it like a mantra to curious folks, reveling in its specialness and symmetry. To have a baby born on Leap Day! The last day of the month, just like me! Even better, the most unique last day of the month! Wow!

So here I am on this cloudy afternoon, fielding phone calls and eating angel food cake, swollen with fluid and a squirming baby, feeling downright emotionally fragile. Leap Day has never been so anti-climatic.

My midwife Roseanne was wearing her scrubs today, just in case. "I'm ready!" she called out to me when I arrived for my weekly appointment. And when I responded "Me too!" I realized that for the first time, I actually mean it.

I wasn't ready this past weekend, when we were scrubbing the floors and reorganizing the kitchen cabinets and hosting a little Oscar-watching pizza party. Nor was I ready on Monday, when we filed for new drivers' licenses as Taylors and went down to San Francisco to see a fantastic Leslie Hall concert :) And nope, I wasn't even ready yesterday, a wintry Tuesday filled with laundry and roasted Brussel sprouts, birthing videos and tears.

Today I'm ready.

And, apparently, so is everyone else. Never before have I felt so loved... just as I've been writing this, two packages and a book have appeared on the porch. Even our mailman sent a card that he stamped and delivered himself. But as the texts and calls and birthing beads keep rolling in, I feel more and more pressure to deliver the little bundle of proverbial joy that everyone is so lovingly celebrating. And I've never been good at letting people down.

So I guess there's nothing left to do but surrender. As Roseanne pointed out, could be tonight, could be March 13...