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Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Benjamin's Birth: The Prequel

I woke up on Saturday morning feeling relatively healthy, which was a nice surprise to wake up to. I still had the sniffles and a bit of a cough but at least I wasn't feeling like a zombie anymore. Andrew and I had a goal to finish going through our boxes of stuff (that have been in storage for the past four years) and get rid of things we didn't want or need. We'd done about half of our stuff the week before and were quite successful in purging several boxes of their contents. We did the same this Saturday but I got tired before we finished and left Andrew to fend for himself in the storage room.

What I really wanted was a nap but since Miriam was refusing to take hers I found it difficult to take mine. So instead I sat outside, exhausted, while the girls splashed in their wading pools. Their friend Emily came over to play and I almost cried because I was feeling so awful but instead I helped all three girls change into their swimsuits and let them splash to their hearts' content. Fortunately this was a good play date and all three girls got along...swimmingly. Pun intended. Sometimes when they play all three of them bicker and they drive me crazy but on Saturday they got along great.

After Emily went home I made French toast for dinner which meant I had to stand up by the griddle the whole time they were cooking. It seemed to take forever and I whined about it a lot because I just wanted to sit down or lie down or pretty much anything not standing in front of a griddle. When Andrew, who had finished going through all our boxes on his own, came upstairs I said, "Is it just me or is this taking a really long time to cook?"

He finished cooking dinner.

We ate and then someone did the dishes...either him or me or both or even neither (but someone did them at some point).

We got the girls heading off to bed and I read to them from Little House on the Prairie. Those poor girls have been dying to hear more of the story but because I was sick all week with laryngitis (among other ailments) I had only been reading them short picture books before bed instead. Since I was feeling better cold-wise (though suddenly and inexplicably horrible in general) I let them talk me into reading them a chapter. But only one.

I had killer contractions all through story time but I just breathed deeply and evenly through them and made it through the chapter. I'm pretty sure I didn't read with much emotion; I just flatly read the words that were on the page. Then I sang to my girls, kissed them goodnight, and sank into my rocking chair in front of the computer where I worked on editing my mom's dissertation until around midnight, checking with Andrew every half hour to see if he was ready to go to bed.

"I'm tired. Are you ready for bed?"

"It's 10:00."

"I know."

"I'm going to keep working."

"Alright; I guess I can do a bit more..."

***

"I'm tired. Are you ready for bed?"

"It's 10:30."

"I know."

And that's kind of how the evening went until midnight when I finally convinced Andrew we should go to bed. I realize I could have gotten up and gone to bed at any point in the evening but for some reason I just didn't want to go to bed alone. So I didn't.

Andrew rubbed my back until he fell asleep. I never really fell asleep-asleep but drifted in and out of a fog. I was having more of those silly Braxton Hicks contractions. They weren't regular, they weren't getting closer together. They were just annoyingly there, pulling me out of sleep and making me focus on breathing and relaxing just to get through them.

Eventually I decided that they weren't going to stop while I was lying down so I should get up and move around, get a big drink of water, go to the bathroom, and then go back to bed to see if the contractions would go away so that I could sleep. It was 2:30 in the morning when I willed my aching body to get out of bed.

For some reason, though, Andrew sat up in bed when I did. He reached out and grabbed my arm.

"What's wrong!?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said. "I'm just going to the bathroom."

I wasn't remotely worried. I always have tons of Braxton Hicks contractions.

Andrew wasn't remotely worried, either. He was sleep-talking.

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations! He is a cutie! I hope he's doing well! I should have commented on your last post--I was sure surprised! I thought "wait, who's Benjamin?" and then "but wait, she wasn't due for a long time, was she?" and then I went to facebook and found out that I was not crazy and he was early. :)

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