38 Weeks: Inductions and Photos and Ducks… Oh My!

Once in a lifetime comes a parenting blog with photographs so touching, it makes you feel like having kids all over again.

This is not that blog.

The doctor would like to induce me next weekend because of Baby Freedom’s estimated size — 98th percentile as of two weeks ago — so I was hoping to make the most of our remaining time as a family of three this weekend.  We trekked to Santa Monica to enjoy the park with the duck pond, promising Miss Skye that we’d see ducks and making duck noises and flapping our arms like a duck the entire drive there… only to find they’d drained the pond for its “annual cleaning.” Awesome.   To help ease the blow, I simply told Skye that the ducks had gone bye-bye for a very good cause:  foie gras.

I thought we could salvage the park visit by taking some moving pictures of me, 38 weeks pregnant with the baby they didn’t think would make it past 27 weeks, with my beloved firstborn.

I should have explained to my beloved firstborn which definition of “moving” I meant.

At least the outing temporarily distracted me from the whole induction decision, with which I have been consumed for the past week.  I have mixed emotions about inducing a week early.  On one hand, ultrasound-based measurements can be 1-2 pounds off, plus the women in my family seem to be built to birth big babies, plus I kind of feel like that at this point…?  After surviving all the cervix and bed rest drama?  Freedom should be allowed to make his debut whenever he feels good and ready.

On the other hand, I’m not crazy about the idea of pushing out a child who could eat Shaquille O’Neal for breakfast.  Especially considering babies aren’t supposed to eat solids until they’re six months old.

I e-mailed my cousin, the one who birthed an almost eleven pounder (with NO C-SECTION), for advice and she said she would induce early if she were to have a second child.  The 30 hours of labor and bruising forceps likely had something to with that advice.  She also mentioned something about “walking funny” for a week after delivering, at which point I may or may not have clutched my genitals.

Then there’s my mom, the five-foot-three (and shrinking) woman who had three kids over nine pounds, who reassured me with her trademark sensitivity.

“I don’t get what the big deal is.  Your great-grandma gave birth to an eleven-pound baby.  On a farm.  With NO DOCTOR OR MEDICATION.”

Meaning:  Until I’m lying on a haystack squeezing out a newborn bigger than a horse, I should just shut my wimp-ass mouth and woman up.

We return to the perinatologist this week to reassess Freedom’s size and make our decision — if the kid doesn’t decide to arrive earlier, that is.  We walked a few miles around the city this morning and, ever since, the pressure down there has been so intense, so excruciatingly uncomfortable that I can barely walk two feet without a cry escaping from my wimp-ass mouth.

My great-grandma not only would have powered through this pain, but she would have done it while carrying Shaquille O’Neal and a horse on her back during the 20-mile walk to the farm.  True story.

Oh, okay, after all this pained vagina and cannibalistic baby talk, I feel like I owe you one touching picture:

A kiss from “Ma-Ma” for being born with a blessedly small head.