36 Weeks, People

We just had our 36-week visit at the doctor's office, which marked my first internal exam in a long time. Turns out my cervix is not doing anything worth reporting as of yet. I am glad. I think I would have had a heart attack if I was already dilated or if my cervix was thinning out. The doctor casually mentioned that if I was to go into labor right now, she would not do anything to stop it. Hearing that from my ob/gyn certainly added to the crumbling of my denial. As far as she's concerned, this baby is cooked!

And, thankfully, the internal exam was not as bad as I feared it would be, especially since I thought that today was my day to meet with the only male doctor in my practice. Looks like my luck is turning because it wasn't my luck to have my first internal exam with a male doctor. I also got the paperwork signed so that I can start my maternity leave 2-weeks prior to Pepps' due date and the doctor wrote on the form under DIAGNOSIS : "Normal Pregnancy." Is there anymore more poetic and blessed than having a normal pregnancy? I didn't even know to wish for that explicitly. I feel a tremendous sense of surrender when I think about wishes coming true that I hadn't even gotten around to wishing.

And, there are some wishes that I wish all the time that haven't yet come true. For example, I wish I could walk into any public venue and use a clean, well lit bathroom. Every time I go walking, I have to think long and hard about where I can use the facilities. Most mornings I try to walk part of the way to work. I can usually make it to the Jewel, 40 minutes into the walk, before my bladder explodes on Milwaukee Avenue. It's trickier if I walk home from work. The Jewel is about 50 minutes into the walk home, and it's tough to go 50 minutes without a pee break. The only other bathroom I have found on the way is at the Bucktown Library. Debilitating it is not, but it's damn uncomfortable to be trying to find a bathroom all the live long day.

And, my latest pet peeve is a bookstore in my neighborhood that does not have bathrooms. A bookstore? Come on. You want me to browse through your two floors of books and spend money on USED books, but you won't let me pee? That's the worst policy I can think of, besides the military's don't ask/don't tell. Who can spend less than 20 minutes in a used book store? After all, I don't know what's in there. The whole point of going to a used book store is to lose myself in the stacks and stacks of used books-- enduring the strange smells and narrow corridors-- and not feeling rushed. I want to support the independent book stores and locally owned businesses, but you HAVE TO LET ME PEE. To state the obvious, every Barnes & Noble and Border's I have ever been in have bathrooms that I can use so that I don't have to rush from the self-help section to the children's section and then sprint through the fiction section because my daughter's head is sitting on my bladder. I'm just saying.

Anyway, yesterday we received a changing pad and all the accoutrements to deal with the diaper situation that will commence when Peppermint arrives. That means we are officially ready, as in, really ready for this baby to come. I think the only thing we are are missing is the breast pump, which I am hoping comes in pink. If I hold out long enough maybe I can get one that matches my Chi flat iron!