Due Date

I thought it worth posting today, the day the baby is officially due. According to the midwife I'm not 'ripe' yet, a sentence which makes me feel more like a watermelon then I felt previously... and I feel quite a bit watermelony on a regular basis these days.

I understand my friend who emailed me when she was a few days overdue saying that she felt as if it was all a trick and that there was no baby after all. This is an easy thing to think if one has been in denial all along and hence I am now beginning to doubt there will ever be a birth to go through - a seductive thought. A foolish thought, but a seductive thought.

All the women I now know who are due at this time are gradually disappearing through the door of motherhood and coming out the other side saying 'it's the hardest thing I've ever done oh, but it's so worth it'. 'Oh', say others, 'you're about to join the least exclusive club in the world'.

Such enticements, such blandishments, I just don't know if I can stop myself. Sign me up, please. All that hard work simply to join some tatty old club. Perhaps it's just that they're too overwhelmed by hormones to wax majestic about the experience.

Realistically of course there's nothing I can do at this point to stop myself - and yes, I know that Paradise is at the feet of Mothers and all that and naturally, after nine months of being undeniably pregnant I realise that there is no way out... but all these 'realistically's and 'of course's and 'undeniably's fade to nothing beneath the sheer capacity of the human mind to indulge in mind-numbing displays of irrationality. We could hold our own Guy Fawkes night under these delusions.

What baby?....peeeow....What birth?.....boooom....crackle..... the sky explodes with pleasant visions while deep inside the baby puts a knee in my side and his head on my bladder... reality strikes... are all pregnant women this schizophrenic?

What is it going to take for me to believe in this baby enough to get him out into the real world? Do I need a pair of red shoes and a little dog? Do I have to clap my hands and repeat 'I do believe in babies... I DO believe in babies' until he pops out? What? Tell me... what??

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