I read on a message board for pregnant women due in February that week 37 is a hard one for impatience, but it gets better. That intensity of impatience is just not sustainable in the face of the reality of continuing to be pregnant day after day. I think it's a hard week for impatience because this is the first week that the baby would be really ok and not even called premature if she's born now. She's all ready to come out developmentally, she's just getting more fat for dealing with this relatively cold world and getting more surfactant in her lungs. Surfactant is this stuff that keeps her little lungs from sticking together inside so they can fill with air when she comes out of water world into air world. That sounds important, but she's been working on that for a while now, and I think she's about done with it. So I don't have to feel guilty or held back from really wishing she would come out anymore because she would (finally) be ok if she came now. So she should come now, right? And yet, I still don't have a bit of control over the whole thing. Oh well, I'm getting a little serenity and letting go going on here so I'll be OK. The discomforts of pregnancy that have stepped up a bit lately are leveling off, so I'm used to it and that helps too. I'm almost ready to wait and not expect her to come until her due date or even after. But I am excited, and there's something compelling about something momentous that could happen at any time.
Posted by Bahiyyih at February 10, 2005 09:28 AM