I am 39 weeks pregnant today. I don't consider myself a superstitious person but as I was lounging in a hot bubble bath just now, eating a handful of dark cocoa cookies [my third package this week], I contemplated the reasons I am still pregnant and waiting endlessly for this little girl to be born.
I must be doing something very wrong, I thought, or very right for her to want to cozy up for so long in my uterus. Maybe this little girl has an inkling that once she is born she will no longer be enjoying dark cocoa cookies. Maybe the warmth of the bath makes her want to retreat farther into my ribcage. Perhaps I haven't done enough squats or eaten enough balsamic vinegar or pineapple. Maybe I've been too comfortable on the couch when I should've been out walking. What if she's stuck in my pelvis? What could I possibly be doing wrong?
I keep thinking of that 'days of the week' poem my mother always used to recite to me, the one that goes:
Monday's child is fair of face
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.
I think about this rhyme more than may be healthy. Am I unknowingly sending signals to my baby to stay put on Wednesdays because I don't want a woeful daughter and encouraging her to strive for a Friday like her mama?
Superstition.
She will come on the third Saturday of the month when the cock crows twice and the moon is waning and all toilets suddenly flush counterclockwise.
I assume every mother feels this way so far into her pregnancy. No one wants to wait for the rest of her life to begin. I can't imagine waiting two years--as elephants do--to meet my baby. Forty weeks is pure torture.
I'm off to go walk around in circles while eating spicy food and hopping on one foot with my left toe touching my ear.