My first Braxton Hicks—a reminder that she's coming soon, and I'm not ready!

I woke up at 4AM this morning with contractions. My first thought—this is new. Finally some Braxton Hicks! I never had them with WV, so the feeling was unfamiliar, but I was pretty sure these were those fake practice crampings that I’ve heard so much about. But then, when they continued at intervals of a few every 10 minutes, I started to think: what if this is it? What if she has decided to come just under 6 weeks early?

She’s not fully baked yet. She would possibly be in the NICU, be underweight, and have a rough start.

But I’m not fully baked yet either! I have so much I plan to do in the next 5 weeks! For one, and most importantly, I don’t plan to be pregnant again, so I want my sister to take a really nice, beautiful picture of me so I can remember my pregnancy. (Not Demi Moore style. There will be no extra skin or side booty or bobbies involved—just a nice picture in a park or sitting on a wooden rocking chair or on a casual stroll, caught accidentally mid laugh, not looking at the camera—sort of a whoops, you got me, look how charming I am pregnant sort of picture. You know, completely unintentional and unplanned! Maybe I will stroll around Walton Island and drop Liz a text message casually letting her know what I’m doing, and I won’t even know when she is there to take this completely happenstance perfect picture of my heavenly pregnant state that my grandchildren will one day gasp at and say, “Grandma, is that you? You are glowing!” and strangers might even tear up at when they catch a glimpse. No pressure, sister—you’ve just got to magically make big-ole’-huffing-and-puffing-me into a graceful radiant angel or I will pregnant-zilla hulk out on you. I’m serious.)

I also want my bedroom painted. We only have 2 bedrooms, so Vivi will share with us for the first several months of her life and then with Wally Ben. So her bedroom has been done for 2.5 years. Ours, on the other hand, has never been painted. So I am “nesting” in there this time. (Gack, ick! That’s one of those pregnancy terms that I hate and is so lame and gag-me-with-a-cute-little-baby-spoon.) I really just have always wanted to paint in there, so I drop the nesting word and W4 is up there painting as we speak! Kind of like all the times I’ve “craved” donuts this pregnancy. Those words don’t work unless your belly sticks out so far that it prohibits you from seeing if you’ve remembered to put your suit bottoms on at the pool when you go for toddler swim last Thursday, so you reach down in a panic to check. (Yep, they were there. Thank goodness!)

There’s other stuff too. I want to set up my work so it will be super easy for me to leave and come back to. I want to go to the Sprinkle my work has planned for me where 65% of the activities include telling me how cute I look. (Seriously! Check out the amazing invite—click the image to make it bigger so you can see it better to read.)

And I want to enjoy WV’s company as my first child uninterrupted as much as I can. I’ve been playing his “Here’s your army guy. Here’s my army guy. What should we do?” game, where we wander around the block towers we’ve built with as much excitement as I can muster (Oh my goodness, soooooo boring!), but lately I take pause very often to note that I won’t have as much time to play these silly games with him at any time very soon. He seems to sense that the end of our undivided, all day, one-on-one time is near, since I’ve been getting extra hugs and snuggles lately (although this may be because he can wrap his legs perfectly around my belly and lay his head on my shoulder, and squeeze his arms in the gap just above my belly—there is so much more of me to work with!).

So when I woke up an hour after the Braxton Hicks had started and realized they were gone, I was relieved. This pregnancy has been so easy so far, that I love Vivi in utero. I think I might keep her in there another year if I could, considering she’s so easy to take to restaurants and the grocery store and gatherings, and she is so well behaved, and so quiet and lovely. But I will settle for 5 weeks. I look forward to meeting her in 5 weeks! Not a day sooner! I’ve got a lot to do!