50% Effaced.

After about a month of feeling really, really healthy and letting myself getting sort of cocky about that fact, I'm starting to notice the all-too-familiar pangs and pains of Crohn's again. I've spent the past few days trying to determine if that god-awful dull ache I feel around my stomach is because of my disease or just the baby's way of saying hi, Mom. (I think the former.)

I've dealt with stomach pain for pretty much my entire conscious life. I'd like to say I'm a pro at masking discomfort. I've trained myself to smile when it hurts. And it's this little charade that worries me about pregnancy, because I've spent so long perfecting the art of ignoring pain that I tend to do just that--ignore it.

I think I've even thought to myself--maybe even said it out loud--that whenever, one day in the distant future, I have a baby, labor pains will hardly phase me. Thanks to a lifetime of digestive disease. It's one of those things that you know isn't true even when you're saying it, but if I've had to spend a good portion of my public life worrying about where the nearest bathrooms are, I figured the least I could do is make myself out to be some sort of tough-as-nails girl because of it.

The truth is, I'm terrified of labor. And pain. I had surgery in my teens to remove some of my intestines, and I remember waking up from the anesthetic too early and feeling the sensation of a fresh incision across my lower abdomen. I remember that pain. And I remember that I never, ever wanted to be in that kind of pain again.

I told all of this to my doctor today at my 35 week appointment. She checked me to make sure my recent problems haven't been causing any dilation (answer: no dilation but already 50% effaced, and her head's down really, really low).

I can't believe it's been nine months. But just the same I can't believe I have at least 3, maybe 5, maybe 6 weeks left to go. I'm so excited I can't stand it. And I'm so ready to put this pain-guessing game behind me and focus on being her mom.

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