36 weeks and the labor guessing game.

I think I need to take a break from Baby Center.

I'm surely not alone in my addiction. Once I hit the 30 week mark the women in the "Due in February" group started adding to the birth announcements thread. At first it was a slow trickle. A new post every few days. And now, every morning I wake up to 2, 3, 4, 5 new posts, women due around the same time as me popping out their babies 2, 3, 4, 5 weeks early.

And yesterday while browsing it suddenly, really, truly, actually hit me that I am having a baby soon. Because the hundreds of dollars spent and the completed nursery in my apartment and the 30 pound weight gain were not indicative enough. And the anxiety I felt at the moment was unparalleled. I've never felt such tangible fear, even before being wheeled into serious surgery years ago.

It's not necessarily a bad fear. It's just intense. It's the unknown. It's this feeling of trying desperately to grasp at some concrete truth of what's going to happen and realizing that it cannot be touched.

So, yeah, I think I'm going to stay away from the birth announcements for a while. Just until the panic subsides.

From the beginning I let my fear-mongering gastroenterologist scare me into believing that I wouldn't carry this baby to term.

"Women with Crohn's tend to deliver really early," he told me. And then, each time I scheduled an appointment from 25 weeks-pregnant and on: "Well, I'll see you then--that is if you haven't gone into labor, and you probably will!"

So each Saturday I get to on my calendar feels like a tiny little victory, because I've made it another week.

This morning I went to the doctor (I'm going weekly now). I told her all about the pains that stopped me in my tracks yesterday. (Really, I thought I was going into labor. It was a different, unfamiliar kind of pain, like a deep, dull, burning ache piercing my abdomen. Except it didn't contract, or stop and start. It just sat there, sinking into my nerves.) She checked me, and I am at the exact same status I was last Monday--50% effaced and no dilation, although the baby's head is "extremely" low.

I spent so much time worrying about preterm labor that I never stopped to think about being pregnant for 40 plus weeks. I know it's the tried-and-true mantra of pregnant women everywhere, but I really want to see the light at the end of the tunnel. My mother-in-law-to-be told me that I would reach a point where I was so uncomfortable and antsy that I would do anything--endure any amount of pain--to get that baby out.

I'm not quite there today. But give me a few more weeks, and it might be a different story.