Baby, All I Want for Christmas is You

I went to the doctor a few days ago... he says I am dilated to a 5 with the baby in zero position. I am mostly effaced. I've been walking around like this for a while now. It hurts. It sucks. I don't know why I am not in labor. I've been dilated to at least a 3 and 70% effaced for over a month. I've had my membranes stripped twice, and I have tried acupressure, essential oils, squats and jumping jacks, eating certain foods, ingesting evening primrose oil, prayer, and every other thing suggested by friends and websites. Except castor oil. I won't go that far.  

I am not amused. 

I took the above "selfie" over a week ago. I didn't think I could get much bigger. I WAS WRONG. I feel like I have doubled in size since then. My belly no longer looks like a pregnant woman's belly... it looks like a fat man's humongous beer belly. I imagine my baby weighs about ten pounds. And I am still going to try a natural labor... yikes!!

My mom was here for almost two weeks, but she left today to go to Sierra's baptism back in Utah. She is going to be flying right back afterward, and hopefully she will actually get to see her new grandson this time! I don't think she was planning on staying for so long. December is a busy month. But this baby has just not wanted to come out!

On my due date I was so depressed I didn't go to church. I've kind of come out of that depression, but it was really bad that day. On Monday Asher had some sort of eye/ear infection, so we decided he could stay home for two days. We tried to have a very active and fun-filled Monday... we walked around some model homes, we ate lunch at The Apple Dumpling Cafe, my mom and Gwen and I all walked home while Dan took Asher to the doctor. I taught a last minute voice lesson, because hey, why not? And then we went to see Frozen in the theaters. It was a cute movie. Asher loved it, Gwen was scared a lot.

I went to my final OB appointment on Wednesday. My doctor is very nice and I like him a lot, but he gave me the induction date of December 17th. I think if I am still pregnant on the 17th I will be wishing for death. I was so sad that I burst into tears after I walked out of the office.

We went to the Mesa temple lights on Wednesday night. They were beautiful, but I couldn't enjoy them really because walking hurts so badly right now. We went out to eat at Freddy's last night. I have stopped caring about what goes in my body... so I ate an enormous amount of fries, a burger, some chili fries (with a jalapeño slice, just to see if it would put me into labor) and some bites of ice-cream. I was super stuffed.

I have missed out on many things this December. We did make it to our church Christmas party on the 6th, but I didn't go to book club (in December they do a nice dinner and book exchange, and I read the book and really wanted to talk about it), the RS dinner (which I was sort of supposed to be in charge of, but of course with the timing of this baby I put almost all of the responsibility on others), and I also wanted to make it to some live theater shows. I'm going to keep missing things, but I don't care as long as the baby comes out.

On the bright side, our house looks nice and clean because my mom was here waiting for the baby. She also decorated for Christmas, which I just didn't have the energy to do. Our front rooms and our tree look amazing. And it was fun to just be with her and the kids have loved having Grandma around. She is a very helpful person and relaxing presence, I am blessed to have her as my mother. Let's hope she has something to come back for soon!