Week 39: False alarm

I think the last week of pregnancy is meant to prepare you mentally for the addition of a new baby—just teetering on the edge of sanity. Every day we wonder if today will be the day that I go into labor, and the plethora of Braxton Hicks contractions I’ve been getting the last few days have really kept us on our toes. It’s gotten to the point where I feel like I need to hide these false contractions from my worried husband, or else he will spend the entire night watching me with concern and fighting the urge to sleep. He needs these last few days of baby-free sleep as much as I do, so I decided to downplay or, at times, omit the uncomfortable Braxton Hicks that keep coming my way.
I wonder if my body is preparing us for the limited sleep we will soon be getting because my Braxton Hicks contractions seem to favor the night. We’ve had three nights recently were we wondered if this was actually go time, waiting for the consistent wave of contractions to get stronger and closer together. Unfortunately, each time I eventually woke up after falling asleep and realized there had been no progress, and by the time we were eating breakfast, the contractions had completely subsided. No baby, just a night full of uncomfortable cramping and interrupted sleep.
In these last few days, both my husband and I have been going a little crazy, each in our own way. I’ve become obsessed with researching the signs of real labor. I spend hours Googling and reading labor stories online, just looking for clues as to when it might be the real deal for me. Every time I wake up in the middle of the night to pee, I wonder if this will be the moment when my water breaks. My husband has become obsessed with my wellbeing, not that that’s a bad thing. It’s just getting a little annoying at this point. I hear, “Is it baby time?” from him at least five times a day. Every time I turn over in bed or switch positions to try to get comfortable on the couch he asks if I’m having contractions. It’s safe to say that we are both going a little bonkers from the anticipation.
We spent the last 39 weeks trying to prepare ourselves for the biggest change in our lives, and now we are both ready for it to just happen already. This past Sunday we went out for a big breakfast and then I insisted on walking around the mall for a few hours. He knew my secret intentions were to hopefully encourage the start of labor. You would think at 39 and a half weeks pregnant that some good old fashioned sex would work to speed things up, but we didn’t have any luck there either. There really is nothing we can do to move things along. We just have to do our best to be patient and ride out these false alarms while we wait for the real thing. But hey, I hear it’s all totally worth it in the end.