40 Weeks – August 5th, 2011 (due date)

Yesterday was the “official” due date, and it has come and gone rather uneventfully. I’m not particularly worried, since I know that most first babies are late and that the midwives won’t pressure us to induce until 42 weeks. We still have time.

I get the occasional sensation of the baby’s head pressing down on my cervix, but it’s sporadic and usually short-lived. The Braxton-Hicks contractions have certainly increased in intensity, but I definitely wouldn’t classify any of them as “legitimate” contractions yet. Yesterday, while shopping at Wal-Mart (I know…), I thought I might have felt a slight trickle of amniotic fluid, and I chuckled at the sheer trashiness of the idea of my water breaking at Wal-Mart.

The baby still moves around in his increasingly confined quarters, and J can still hear his heartbeat through my belly, so basically, everything’s fine and we just keep on keeping on.

We’re trying to fill our days with interesting plans and events, rather than sitting around the house just waiting for something to happen, but it sure is difficult when all of our plans come with the caveat, “as long as we’re not having a baby.” This evening — as long as we’re not having a baby — we’ll be going to a cocktail party aboard the Chilean Navy’s Training Ship Esmeralda, who is docked in North Vancouver this weekend. What a gorgeous ship!

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia “Esmeralda (BE-43)”

Hopefully we’ll have some exciting news to report in the coming days…