Pretending to Be Calm and Collected

oh, um, hello. I am now past my due date. I don't enjoy it. even though I have wanted to go overdue in order to go to one more of my classes on monday, I am still a fireball of anxiety. you know the thing about being pregnant? is that every woman experiences it differently. which means this is not the things about being pregnant-- this is actually just the thing about life and humans. but you can read birth stories looking for signs, and every one will be different. some women can sense the shift within their own bodies and know they are close to labor. some women feel like everything is staying put until suddenly they are bowled over with contractions. some women are in pre-labor for dddaaayyysss on end. there is absolutely no way to know when you will go into labor. some of us deal with that uncertainty better than others. in this scenario, some women feel like they are about to lose. their. freaking. minds. ummm... ahem. not me, of course. (ok, but really. I am about to lose my mind.)

I went on a long walk yesterday and watched the leaves swirl off the trees with each gentle gust of wind. It was miraculous and beautiful to watch them float and tumble through the air on their inevitable path to the street. I did my best to at least pretend to be calm and realized that I am like a leaf. This cycle of pregnancy has led me through various stages of development, and now it is almost time for the wind to blow me off the tree, into labor. There is no way of knowing which gust will finally release my stem from the branch, but it will happen soon. So I keep repeating to myself "I am a leaf. I am a leaf."