Under a Month

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36 weeks and 2 days of being pregnant. Am done. Done with working all day with nothing to do. Done with having this huge beach ball sticking out in front and getting in the way of, oh I don't know, bending over, applying body cream, breathing, basically EVERYTHING. Done with feeling sad and crying for no inexplicable reason. I'm even done with complaining. Because oh my God, I've turned into the world's biggest whiner.

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Before you get pregnant you think, "Nine months. That's a long time to be pregnant." But you still have no concept of just HOW LONG nine months actually is. Even at the beginning of this pregnancy, when May 4th seemed as faraway as my 40th birthday, I still don't think it feels as far away as it does right now.

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I've always been like this, I guess. I lose my grace for things right before the end. It's a form of insanity, I believe, because it's so counter-intuitive. Take my time when I was at university working on my Master's. I was able to somewhat endure the hell of living in Vancouver, in a long-distance relationship with Adders, depressed out of my mind but still putting on a brave face all semester long until I made that final decision to quit and return home. And then with only 4 days left of school/exams I found I literally could not go on. I remember sobbing on the phone to Adders that I couldn't do it, couldn't make it through another day (just a touch dramatic, I know) and he was all, "What the fuck is wrong with you?" (although, because we had only been dating a year at the time and weren't married and abusive to each other yet, it was probably more like, "Courty, it's not that bad, sweetie. Only 4 more days! You'll get through it, I promise!"). But seriously, those 4 days felt like an eternity. My grace was up, I was done. It was time to move on. Of course, somehow I made it through those 4 days, obviously. But not without making sure every single person around me knew just how badly I was "suffering."

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Well, that's what this is like, particularly with this job. I have 6 days left of work (7 if you include today). In the big scheme of things, 7 days is nothing. NOTHING! And yet, I approach each and every one of these days as if I'm walking to the guillotine. I cried this morning to Adders over nothing. I snapped at Luscious Lucy for not cooperating as I wiped her feet off after our morning walk. But mostly, I spent the entire morning as I got ready, coupled with all of last evening, and every day over the past 2 weeks, feeling immensely sorry for myself.

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Of course, no one knows why I want to be done work so badly because we all know how well I fare when I have no schedule and nothing to do at home (let me give you idea: crying, depression and general gnashing of the teeth). So I'm not quite sure why I'm so eager to trade in this boredom for another boredom. And at least with this boredom I'm getting actual money just to be bored.

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But the more I think about it, though, it's not so much that I'm eager to not work anymore, it's that I'm eager to get started on the next stage of life. And for whatever reason, going on official maternity leave signals to me that we've now moved into "having a baby" mode. Because let me tell you, right now everything feels so stagnant. Besides generally just getting bigger and bigger, NOTHING IS HAPPENING. It doesn't feel like we're making any progress or that we'll ever get to the stage of GIVE ME MY BABY!

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So with the general rundown of the 9th month of pregnancy and its symptoms, here's where we're at: I cry. A lot. For no reason. I am tired. All the time. I have no heart burn, no indigestion, no nausea, no leaking breasts. Really, I'm experiencing nothing but a belly the size of a whale, a constant, persistent ache in my back, the inability to ever take a deep breath or sleep through the night, a continual frantic need to "prepare" for the baby by buying more shit and cleaning the house, a little bit of incontinence (too much info?!) and a general sense of crabbiness.

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Do you realize that I have over 3 weeks left? Possibly 4 if this baby doesn't cooperate? Wow! Won't these next few entries be uplifting...