Numbers

I have 3 days of work left. 3. I have worked for the past 380 days (working days, and dude, totally not counting the sick days because I have no idea...) and to think that I have 3 days left until an extended leave is a little strange.

The temp who will be taking up some slack started this morning. He's nice enough, but I feel like a neurotic mother handing over my children to the care of a stranger. A STRANGER. And yes, I bitch about them, they are often ridiculous, but they're still like my children. I know all of their neurotic ticks, I know their passions and addictions (one of my faculty members consumes his weight daily in diet Dr. Pepper), I know what's going on in their families, what they like and dislike, how they want their work organized, what makes them happy and how to read their body language when they are NOT happy. Many of them are gone this week---off on holiday with their spouses and children--and they will come back to the office and find a STRANGER. It's a very, very weird feeling.

I have been pregnant for 276 days. I have at least 6 more days to go until my due date and 13 to go until my doctor will induce me if I have not gone in to labor on my own.

Please excuse me for a moment while I hyperventilate into this paper bag...







Ok. I'm ok. It just seems so strange. It's been 409 days since the Husband and I made the ultimate decision to throw away my precious little packs of delicate white pills. It's such a strange journey that we've been on. I was telling Whimsy in an email--that here, at the end of things I'm looking back at the beginning. And at the time, I couldn't think of anything harder or more frightening than throwing away those little packs of pills--even though I knew, I KNEW in my bones that it was the right decision. I was so freaked out that I threw them in the trash and had to remove the trash to the dumpster immediately.

I was telling the Husband the other day how with pregnancy it seems like you hold your breath a lot. Not literally, but psychologically...you hold your breath to make it through the first trimester--those critical 84 days. And then it's holding your breath until that first ultrasound--119 days of tension waiting to hear that everything is ok. After that it's holding your breath for the baby to gain weight, to drop, to turn and rotate and shift and in the end you've held your breath for 290 days.


I've been nervous. Not really that anxious for the boy to come out just yet-- he is rather portable as he is. And yesterday one of the women that the Husband works with gave us this willow-wood statue of a man, a woman and a baby--and I started to cry because I'm ready now. At least, my heart is ready for this little boy to come out and be part of our family.

After all, I've held my breath for 277 days. I think we'll be ok now.