Week 40: Any Day Now …

Books read in the past week:
“Little Earthquakes,” by Jennifer Weiner
“Digging to America,” by Anne Tyler
“Nights of Rain and Stars,” by Maeve Binchy
Assorted chick-lit paperbacks that caught my eye in the library

Movies watched in the past week:
Rumor Has It
Junebug
Over the Hedge
The DaVinci Code

Phone calls from friends and relatives in the past week:
too many to count

My due date has come and gone. Even though my doctor says that first babies are, on average, six days late, I didn’t think it would happen to me. But here I am, still pregnant at 40 weeks. Technically, the baby is only a couple of days late. And, as I’ve been reminded infinite times during my pregnancy, predicting the due date is not an exact science. Still, I was discouraged when at my last appointment, the doctor reported that nothing was happening. At all. She prescribed evening primrose oil and sex to “get things moving.”

Now, everyone and her sister has a trick for jumpstarting labor. Some swear by spicy food, others insist that long walks, a glass of wine, or a hot bath work wonders. And, of course, there’s the sex suggestion. The theory is, that’s what got the baby in there in the first place, and it can help get the baby out. Only before the baby was in there, you probably weren’t carrying around an extra 35 lbs. and a basketball-sized belly. You probably still had ankles, could fit rings on your unswollen fingers, and didn’t grunt every time you changed position.

So it’s only natural that some of the other suggestions would seem a wee bit more appealing. In the past week I’ve tried: spicy drunken noodles from the Thai place (twice), the Victorian-sounding primrose oil capsules (which get stuck in my throat), daily walks (torture on my sore hips and pelvis), a hot bath, a few glasses of wine, yoga, bouncing on my exercise ball, visualization, massage, and having C. issue stern statements to the baby indicating that we’re ready for him or her to be born.

The amount of phone calls we get these days is comical. I haven’t been this popular since I was the first of my college roommates to get a car. My mother calls daily, and has taken to pretending she’s calling for reasons other than to find out if the baby is on its way. (Sure, Mom, whatever.) If I don’t answer the phone, people panic and start calling everyone else I know to see if THEY know if I’m off having the baby. Believe me, people, when I do YOU’LL KNOW!! I’ll broadcast it on the radio and take out a front-page ad in the newspaper.

Of course, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie beat me to it this weekend by giving birth to the most anticipated celebrity baby ever (a daughter named Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt) -- ON MY DUE DATE. Maybe my baby’s just waiting for the publicity to die down before he/she makes his/her appearance.