My official due date is Friday, and already I’m shaking my fists at the heavens and wondering why God or fate or who/whatever is making me wait so long to meet this boy.  My pregnancy has been ridiculously easy. I had no morning sickness, only slight nausea that lasted for a couple hours in the early days. I threw up just once. I grew in mostly all the right places, and little in the less desirable ones. Strangers couldn’t tell I was pregnant until I was well over six months along. Just last week, I wore a non-maternity sweater to Christmas Eve dinner.  All in all, I’ve had it good. And yet. Now? My brain is acting like a petulant child, silently saying things like, ‘everybody else gets to have their baby a little early, why can’t I?’ Whine, whine whine.

I restlessly search the internet looking for the magic cure that will jump start this labor. Spicy food?  I had sriracha-laden dishes for both lunch and dinner the other day. Sex? Well, since you asked, yes, even checked that now awkward task off the to-do list. A close friend summed it up perfectly: it ain’t pretty!  Walking?  I feel like I’ve done a fair amount, given the 20 degree temps here lately. But baby seems pretty comfy in his little home, even if I am not.

I went to the Mayo Clinic website, hoping those Midwestern experts would have some advice for me.  I found the following:

You may be more likely to have an overdue pregnancy if:

• This is your first pregnancy
• Overdue pregnancy runs in your family
• Your baby is a boy

Three for three….this guy’s never coming out!

The medical community sets the duration of pregnancy at 40 weeks. 280 days. As of today, I’m 262 days into this endeavor. 262, 280, either way that’s a hell of a lotta days. I’ve been pregnant for so long I almost feel sick of talking about it. I’m definitely at the stage where I fear you’re probably sick of hearing about it. And yet, really, what else can I talk about?  This pregnancy casts its protruding, orbital shadow over every thing I do. Increasingly more so now that I’m in the home stretch. The phone rings and I utter a silent curse before I heave myself off the couch. The doorbell buzzes and I’m downright APPALLED.  Who in the hey-all would have the NERVE to ring my doorbell?! Do they know what I have to go through to get up and answer the damn thing?  Suddenly I understand why it takes the elderly a full four rings to pick up the telephone, a solid seven minutes to come to the door. Don’t ever bother an elderly person unless you have something worth their while to share.

I guess some people find enjoyment in the final stages of the third trimester. With limited mobility, friends and oved ones start to wait on you, bringing you things and murmuring soothing stay puts, I got its. Unfortunately, I’m not enjoying this so much. I like being independent and able bodied. I like being able to jump up and say, ‘I got it, be right back!’  Now, all it takes is one look at my face and my husband knows that, no, I don’t got it. Everything is a chore. Loading dishes in the dishwasher ends with me heaving a heavy sigh. Pulling out the stepladder to grab a dish from a high cabinet results in family members casting blame on one another. “You’re going to let the pregnant lady reach for that?!”  Even the cleaning lady has got her eye on me. I finally gave up on hefting laundry down to our apartment building’s basement in a basket and gave in to rolling it all to the elevator in one of the laundry room carts.  “Good idea, Sarah” she says with a meaningful nod.

Mobility. It’s a beautiful thing. In a way, I think I’ve got a better understanding of the mindsets of people who suffer a major trauma that leaves them disabled. Morning news and talk shows parade these people out as heroes for tackling everyday tasks while missing limbs. I think it’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t know about heroic. I think it’s human nature, and a matter of keeping one’s sanity. No one wants to be at the mercy of outside help. We all want to feel like whatever it is we want or have to do, we can tackle it on our own. Asking or requiring help is a stumbling block that slows us down. Help should be a gift card we pull out when we feel like saving our cash for another day.  These days, I’m cashing in a lot of gift cards. I miss the greenbacks.

Pregnant women spend a lot of time reading books, blogs, Web sites and anything else we can get our anxious little hands on that will help prepare us for the baby that’s about to wreak havoc joy on our lives. I think more than anything, we are particularly interested in learning about sleep. How can we get our baby to sleep, and for long, uninterrupted stretches of time? We’ve all heard the horror stories, and we hope and pray and beg and plead that we’ll be spared. Maybe if we arm ourselves with enough knowledge we will successfully avoid the fates that others– others who we like to presume were less proactive than us–were dealt.

Perhaps the joke’s on us. We think we’re so smart with our knowledge and our seeking of the knowledge. Meanwhile, little bundle o’ joy is busy plotting his or her own sleep training—on us. Over the last couple weeks I’ve noticed a pattern emerge in my third trimester. Not only am I waking up every few hours, it seems I’m waking up at the same few hours every night. You could set an alarm clock to it. In bed between 10:30 and 11, followed by a wake-up trip to the bathroom at 2, followed by a brief fifteen minutes or so of wakefulness at 4, culminating with a final wake-up call at 6:30. Am I subconsciously waking up when the baby’s waking up? Are these the hours he’ll keep when he arrives? If so, I suppose I don’t have much to complain about; I’ve heard of worse.

But I’m amazed. There is so much that your body does to get you ready for this baby. Most you barely notice. You start covering your stomach in crowded spaces – your first taste of parental protectiveness. You find yourself saying ‘baby likes it’ (even though you have absolutely no idea what baby, in fact, likes) – your first dip into the pool of selflessness. It’s less important what you like these days; as long as baby’s happy, you’re happy. And now, your body is adapting to short spans of sleep. You’re learning how to wake up and fall back asleep, over and over again. Eight straight hours of uninterrupted sleep is lost for now. It’s been tabled for another time. Slowly, baby is getting you trained.

My iPhone “Days Until” app tells me there are 75 days until our baby arrives. You know, if babies were to come exactly when the medical community predicted they will. Which, I understand, is nearly never. Regardless, in the back of my mind is a ticking countdown clock, the kind that grows increasingly louder as you get closer to the end, when the final ticks are so loud you want to jump out of your skin and scream at the top of your lungs STOP IT!! MAKE IT STOP!!!!

Truth is, I don’t want it to stop. I want the clock to keep on ticking (although it’d be nice if it ticked quietly, soothingly), and in fact I would like the clock to speed up. With baby’s arrival so near I just want him to be here already. I’m ready to get started. I’ve gone through the phases: shock, awe, amazement, holy-shit, how-will-I-do-this? And now, I’m in the final phase: I-think-I-can-do-this.

The surreal, I-can’t-believe-there’s-a-person-inside-me feeling has passed. Now I believe it. I think this has to do with the increasing amount of movement he’s been exhibiting inside my stomach. I guess this is nature’s way of telling you, ‘that’s right, bitch, there’s a person in there, and he’s coming for you!’

Every night I spend some time laying down and staring at my stomach, waiting for it to move. My dad commented a few weeks ago that it’s a bit like watching grass grow. He’s right for the most part, but if you wait long enough and watch closely enough, a blade shoots up out of nowhere and it’s all worth it. Baby’s kicks have gone from fluttery movements to insistent thumps. Sometimes I think he’s flung an arm or a foot out straight. Sometimes it seems as if he’s got the hiccups. Other times, as my stomach undulates like an ocean wave from one side to another, it appears he’s rolling over. It’s creepy and cool and kinda sci-fi and amazing all at the same time. I watch his movements and make vast generalizations about his character. He can’t stay still (like mom AND dad), he’s a flail around kind of sleeper (like mom), he’s an athlete (like mom in theory, dad in ability). I guess the final phase of motherhood preparedness training has seeped in because no matter what he’s doing in there, or what conclusion I draw from it, I always end up feeling 100 percent certain that he’s perfect. Just perfect.

Worms. Butterflies. Gusts of air. Wishful thinking.

I’ve been trying for the past few days to accurately describe the sensations I’m feeling in my stomach these days but I really can’t come up with the right words. Sometimes I think I’m just imagining things, making up a reality simply because my stack of pregnancy books tells me this is what happens at this stage. Starting around 16 or 17 weeks, “you should start to feel your little bean kick!” What To Expect When You’re Expecting coos in its trademark cloying voice. “You’ll feel your baby’s first fluttering movements, what doctors and other health care professionals call quickening,” The Mayo Clinic Guide To Healthy Pregnancy states matter of factly. What To Expect… is that female teacher who wore themed sweaters for every holiday. The Mayo Clinic is that aloof male teacher everyone respected but could never get a good read on.

When people ask how I’m feeling, I want to tell them about the sensations, but I come up short.

“I feel, like,” I stammer and gesture erratically in the area of my stomach. “I don’t know, I think I can feel things.”

Brilliant.

Lately I’m finding it hard to focus on much else than the Three Major Things that are on my mind: 1) We’re having a baby! 2) We’re selling our apartment! and 3) We need to buy a house! Of course, all three of these Things are inextricably linked, so it’s not as though I can let myself focus on Thing #1 on Monday, followed by Thing #2 on Tuesday. Each Thing is a snowflake that compounds itself into a snowball, morphs into a snowman, and then blossoms into a Sasquatch-sized Snowman avalanche, holy hell, when will life ever again be a series of Surmountable Things like ‘what should my fall wardrobe consist of?’ or ‘what new dishes should I learn to master this month?’ I suppose, given the reality of Thing #1, that the answer to that question is NEVER.

I’m coming up on 20 weeks of pregnancy, and as I look back I realize that up until very recently, I saw my pregnancy as a very exciting, very abstract concept with an ending that I couldn’t really foresee in reality. It was just too huge to be able to imagine it actually happening.  I suppose that’s why nature gives you nine months. It just may take that long to come to grips. Now, following an ultrasound at week 18 that showed us our baby’s hands, (carpals, metacarpals and phalanges all look beautiful, thankyouverymuch) face (a little alien-like at the moment, but there’s still time ) and not-so-private parts (IT’S A BOY!!), reality is now fully setting in.

No longer am I carrying around a person referred to as ‘it,’ I am now carrying around a boy. I know what his name will be. In my head, in the shower, I practice saying it to myself, trying it on, seeing how it fits. I practice saying it lovingly, I practice saying it sternly. I wonder what sports he’ll like to play, how many bruises he’ll incur, how often.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around all the implications of having a boy. I picture him in baggy jeans, shedding grass-stained clothes in a laundry room (provided we accomplish Thing #3 one of these days), playing Battleship, asking for toy trucks, bulldozers, fighter jets. I wonder how many years I’ll have to wait before I can make him take the trash out or haul heavy objects up flights of stairs for me.

“You know what’s weird,” I said to Mike recently, as I amazed over the fact of this boy baking away inside my body, “there’s a penis inside me.”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s how we got here.”