Eviction Day Tomorrow

For the third time, my body has refused to kick out the baby (or my baby has refused to listen; not sure which). So some synthetic "get the heck out" drugs (Pitocin) will be served tomorrow morning for breakfast.

This means I no longer have an excuse for not packing my hospital bag with the proper essentials (toothbrush, hairbrush, clothes, nursing pads, lanolin, phone charger, camera, deodorant, lotion), a task I have thus far ignored entirely for 41 weeks, telling myself I'd do it when I was actually having contractions.

This means I had to go grocery shopping one last time today, something I was desperately hoping to avoid all week. And buy extra muffins for the muffin monsters who devour them in my house. And think about what food I might want to cook at the end of the week when I've (hopefully) regained mobility enough to make a meal for the currently-walking three members of my family. (Freezer meals? You're joking, right? No one in my house eats reheated food. Just today, the husband found one of the three "meals" I made recently and said, "I took out this creepy looking food in a black dish. I think you want to throw it out." They will be ordering takeout or fast food until I return to forcing healthier alternatives onto their plates.)

This means I have no excuse for the house being a mess (at least for 24 hours), because I've had a week's warning of when I'll be going out of commission, so I should have taken care of the laundry/dishes/vacuuming/etc. - right? Instead of having a baby, I wonder if I should have hired a housekeeping service.

With my excuses gone and the baby still here, comfy cozy, I'm stuck cleaning and preparing without the excitement of whatever "nesting" is. The day has finally come- without water breaking dramatically; without seeing whatever a mucous plug is; without a race to the hospital; without a frantic phone call.

But then - everything about Baby 3 has been low-key. From the first "announcement" (sending the husband a text with a picture of the pee stick and the words this totally just happened) until now - the just-another-Sunday before tomorrow's scheduled induction.

And maybe that's okay. Because I didn't want Baby 3 to be life-altering, earth-shattering. I just want it to join us on our muffin-munching trek through the daily grind, where we continually adjust to the chaos the world throws our way until we find our new normal.

So, yeah. We're meeting Baby 3 tomorrow. You'd never know it by looking at any of us right now, but we're ready.