Count Down

It's official - I'm 36 weeks pregnant today. I've been looking back at early pictures of Morgen, and trying to remember through the haze of sleep deprivation and anxiety that was my first few months of motherhood what it felt like to take care of someone so small.

Here, for instance, is a picture of Morgen at two months. She was just about to discover that the taste of her hand was good. And her head was developing the largest case of cradle cap I'd. Ever. Seen. And she's so different now, increasingly capable of surprising us every day. I wonder what new joys and discoveries await us with baby number two, and I hope that we'll be able to avoid some of the trauma and anxiety associated with newborn care now that we've been there once already.

I'm guessing and hoping that labour will be quite different. Morgen was more than two weeks overdue, and had to be induced, which led us far off the comfy pages of our idealistic birth plan and into unexplored territory featuring lots of straps, monitors, drugs (ahhh, drugs) and IV lines. My feet were so swollen by the end of the day that neither the slippers nor the shoes I'd packed would fit. I think I walked out by folding the heels of my shoes over, but again, it's all so hard to remember that I may be making that up.

Two nights ago I dreamed that I gave birth to our new little girl, and I couldn't feel a thing. When she came out she was smiling and so obviously healthy. I had to stop the doctors from shaking her (they wanted to make her cry) but otherwise it was glorious. Fantasy or potential reality? Who cares - it was a fabulous dream, far better than one I remember dreaming while I was in highschool. In that one, the child was born with the legs of a chicken and immediately scrambled away from the doctors in order to bounce all over the room...a dream dictionary I consulted (a very authoritative edition, I'm sure) informed me that babies often represent creative projects in dreams...when the dreamer isn't actually pregnant that is (and I wasn't at the time, I can assure you). And the story of my youthful chicken-legged creative project is a story I can tell you over some alcoholic beverage sometime - assuming I can ever have one of those again.

So, does anyone have any intuitions about the timing of Baby Hammel number two? Am I looking at having the baby at week 37 or week 42? Any advice for me, moms of more than one? I and my subconscious self await your input.