Oh, heyyyy, look at this! Still pregnant! Five days 'till full-term and I can stop worrying (or worry a lot less) about a hospital birth I do not want!
I actually sort of hesitate to write things like that, for a couple of reasons: One, I don't want to jinx myself and go into labor tonight (though I should hasten to add that I don't feel at all like I'm going to), and two, I don't want anyone to think that I'm dumb enough to assume I can predict the date on which this baby will be born or that I'm just SO READY to be DONE! I'm uncomfortable in that hugely-pregnant way, but I'm not miserable, especially because I've spent the better part of the last week easing into my maternity leave. I'm finishing up at school a little earlier than I intended, but I'm trying to listen to my body's cues this time around. Sometime during the wee hours of Wednesday morning after a particularly sleepless night, I realized that I just don't have it in me to teach my full schedule anymore; I wind up exhausted and I have too many contractions. (Teaching freshmen requires a whole lot of energy, y'all.) So I went to school on Wednesday morning and asked my department chair if we could possibly get my afternoon classes covered for the rest of the week. Since I'm already on a .8 contract, taking a half-day means I only had to show up to teach my juniors, and I love my juniors, so I had a pleasant couple of days. I've also had a lot -- a lot, a lot, a lot -- of grading to catch up on, and I know that if I taught my full schedule there's no way any of that grading would happen, because when I come home it's pretty much me just hanging out with Suzannah for the rest of the day. On the couch, if she lets me. Forget grading when she goes to bed, because when she goes to bed, I go to bed. I've gone to bed earlier several times, actually. I'm basically completely useless at night.
My juniors threw me a huge surprise party yesterday. I got to school shortly before third period, tossed my stuff on my desk, and ran (or waddled) up to the office building to pee during passing time. When I returned to my classroom, I was met by three of my junior boys, who blocked the door and began to sing -- a noisy version of "Silent Night," of all things. (They were especially animated when they sang the words "mother" and "child." Also, "virgin.") I laughed, then asked if I was allowed to go inside yet. I could see that my classroom was dark...
...and when I opened the door, they flipped the lights on and yelled something -- "Surprise!" or "Congratulations!" or something I don't remember, because I was busy staring, absolutely wide-eyed, at my room. They'd all gathered underneath a giant banner they'd decorated and signed, and the room was full of pink and blue streamers and tons of balloons. And food, from one end of the room to the other -- cupcakes and brownies and cookies and chips and breads and dips and huge bottles of juice and soda. I was literally speechless. I wasn't really surprised they'd done something, but I thought maybe they'd give me a big card. The fact that they threw this room together in six minutes flat and managed to coordinate so much food and so many decorations (when? I don't know!) blew my mind. And the dorky teacher side of me thought, what a cool class -- they work together so well.
There may have been a childbirth simulation involving a backpack and a baby doll tied on a piece of string. That was fairly horrifying. There was also helium, so the boys -- well. They did what boys do, and I was serenaded some more, with their squeaky little helium voices.
They were noisy and silly and loud and I loved them, and I'm more than a little sad that I won't finish out the year with this class. (But it was nice to have some closure; when I was pregnant with Suzannah, I went into labor so suddenly over Memorial weekend that I just didn't go back to school on Tuesday after a perfectly normal Friday, and I found myself in a funk on the kids' last day of school.)
I really am ready to be done at school, though. I'm starting to let the crankiness out a little too much, and it's not even towards the kids; it's towards every adult who had children decades ago and therefore feels strangely entitled to share their observations and opinions with me. I don't actually need to know that I look like I'm about to pop because my belly has DROPPED so MUCH this time! (Fun Fact: After your first pregnancy, you often don't "drop" until you are literally in labor, but it's not at all uncommon to carry lower. Shouldn't they remember this? They seem to remember everything else.) And also, I don't understand why my pregnancy and birth experience has to mirror someone else's in order for it to be THE RIGHT ONE. And ALSO, I have no patience for people who begin sentences with, "When I was that pregnant, I was still__________." Fill in the blank with whatever impressive thing you want, and then listen to me snap, WELL PIN A ROSE ON YOUR FRICKIN' NOSE. (I really did say that to someone who has a little more, ahem, authority than me at school. Thank goodness the principal looked amused -- and also very much like he wanted to be in a different room at that point. Yeah, it's probably best that I leave now.)
More than once this week I thought, you know, it's a good thing I won't be back to school until next fall, or I'd have to listen to everyone tell me I should be stuffing my baby full of rice cereal or she'll never sleep through the night, and also, I need to be teaching her to sleep on her own. By the time I go back, I will be so deeply entrenched in my ridiculous parenting ways that perhaps people will consider me a lost cause and leave me alone.
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