Young man, this behavoir is unacceptable...

Where to start?

I finished objects to share.

I have fun prizes from blog contests I have won recently to show off.

I'm still pregnant. Barely. Annoyingly. Frustratingly. Painfully. Crazily. Still. Pregnant.

So much to cover, so little time and really, I want to skip the knitting stuff and go right to the baby kvetching.

So I'll compromise: a little knitting and then I get to bitch share my story.

So here's a shock, I have baby knits to show. Knock y'all over with a feather, right?
Ah, yes. Another rendition of the Bib O'Love (full size this time) and the Baby Genius Burp Cloth from the indispensable Mason-Dixon Knitting. I knit these from Lion Cotton (Lion Brand's version of kitchen cotton) in the Wedgewood colorway on size 6 Crystal Palace bamboo straights. It took me a little more than one ball to make both. I love the way the variegated yarn made a cool x pattern on the bib. Unfortunately, you can tell where I switched to the new ball of yarn on the burp cloth. I thought they were both the same dye lot but I had misplaced the ball band for the first skein so I couldn't be sure... In the end I figured it, screw it, it's just a burp cloth. These two cuties will be winging away to Rochester, NY as part of a gift for our good friends who had a little boy a couple weeks ago.

I swear, I am actually going to make some of these for my kiddos at some point- hopefully before they graduate from college.

OK. Enough knitting for now. I will share my fantastic blog contest prizes next time... I have to get the ridiculousness that is the last week of my pregnancy off my chest.

BtB, he is a troublemaker.

I may feel 500 times better at this point in my pregnancy than I did with my daughter but he is causing me grief nonetheless. As y'all know, I have been having contractions for over a week now, and at my doctor's appointment last Thursday I was 2 cm dilated so I was making progress. Thursday night the contractions went from 20-25 minutes apart to 10-12 minutes apart. Hooray! More progress.

Friday night arrives. Contractions are now 5-6 minutes apart. When they had been consistently at this pace for 3 hours we called into the hospital to check in and see what our next step should be. Come on in, they told us, but need to rush or hurry since the pain was still completely tolerable for me. So we call our sitter to come watch Pooh Bear and we finally arrive at the hospital around 1:30 in the morning. We are put in a triage room in the Labor & delivery wing, hooked up to all the fun monitors and then we wait for a doctor to come around to check on me. At 2:00 the doctor comes in, checks me and says that I am 3 cm dilated and she feels I am still in latent (early) labor. She goes off to check with her chief to figure out what to do with me. They decide not to send me home but to see if I can walk myself into active labor. Hubby and I are told to go walk the hospital and to come back at 4:00am to be checked again.

Walking at 2 in the morning. For two hours. fun. Did I mention I had slept maybe two hours the night before? But I will prevail. I will do what they ask and get to active labor. I have rarely met a physical challenge I couldn't overcome and this is no different. I am going to have a baby dammit.

A hospital is very boring between the hours of 2 and 4am.

At four we are back in labor & delivery and my contractions are now a) 2-3 minutes apart and b) more painful. Both good signs.

A quick cervical check shows that I am now 4 cm dilated. Yes! I have accomplished the tasks set before me. But wait, the refs throw a penalty flag and put the baby game on hold.

My cervix is not thinning like they would like, maybe I am not where I need to be. The doctor leaves to consult with her chief again.

Minutes drag on and finally at 4:30 am the doctor comes back with the good news that they have decided to admit me. Hallelujah! I am going to have a baby.

We are assigned a room for which Hubby is very grateful- even the horribly uncomfortable sofa/bed combo they have for family members in the labor rooms seems like a feather bed at this point- we are both exhausted.

I get my IV put in- the nurse chose a horrendous location- as soon as it was in I realized that it totally restricted my hand/wrist range of motion and that there would be NO KNITTING possible as long as it was there. At 5 am my fuzzy, sleep deprived brain thought this was a crisis and I almost asked her to move it but it was pretty painful the first time and I am not quite psychotic enough to go through that again (in retrospect it really was a bad location, I could barely change my clothes). They told me to try to get some sleep so I did.

Fast forward to 8:30am. The doctor comes in and wakes me up. My contractions have slowed down to 7-9 minutes apart so she wants to check me again to see what, if anything, is going on.

You know what's coming don't you?

Zero progress. Nothing. Zip. Nada.

*sigh*

They discharge me and send us home.

So disappointing. So close and yet so far.

Since Saturday morning my contractions have bounced all over the place. We have been walking everyday trying to to get to active labor. I can get close. Last night the contractions were 2-3 minutes apart and they were pretty painful but clearly I am still here so....

I know I still have three weeks until my due date so everything is fine but it is just the frustration of being so close and going home empty handed. The constant contractions and everything else is just making me uncomfortable so I am Ready.

Seriously, the concept of walking around dilated to four cm while my insides play Twister for more than a few more days makes me crazy.

So listen to your mama little boy and come on out, we want to meet you!