...Here's a Shovel.

I know I still have just over a week left to go until my due date, but I'm getting desperate. I'm getting up about 4 times a night now and I feel like I should be on a first-name basis with my bathroom as much quality time as we spend together alone in the dark at 3 in the morning. I now know when the BP garage next to our apartment building shuts off the light in its sign (usually around 12am, in case you were wondering).

I resorted to the entirely unrealistic practice of trying to bribe my unborn child to come out by buying him/her a cute fuzzy blanket. So far, the kid hasn't gone for it. I even washed the blanket as soon as I got it home, so it would be all prepared to go in my hospital bag for whenever this baby decides to put in an appearance. I'm all about being rational - I'm a rational person - but the old wives' tales and superstitions are about to come out with a vengeance. Spicy foods? Check. Though they make my acid reflux worse, so I'll try to avoid them too soon before I hit the hay in the evening. Bouncing up and down? Check. Actually, I'm surprised I can still bounce! I even ran for a while on the treadmill at the gym the other day. Clearly, though, if exercise and running are going to bring this baby around to my way of thinking, I have to take truly drastic measures. Witness, if you will...

I confess, not the best video I've seen, but it gets the story out. This post on The Daily What has a much better narration of the whole event.

So I guess I've discovered what I need to do. Anyone up for a quick 26.2-mile jaunt around the Blackwater Valley trails? ...I didn't think so. (Good thing, too, because with a physiotherapy appointment on Monday, I don't think I'm up for anything like that, either.)

Of course, I actually put no stock in the idea that spicy foods, or castor oil, or sex (though, according to the midwife, it apparently has to be good sex!), or bouncing up and down, or trendy herbs will bring about labour. If the baby is ready to come and my body is ready to push it out, then it'll happen. There's no real use trying to speed things along until that point...especially since no one's really sure what exactly causes labour to start spontaneously in the first place. So short of pretending to be Denzel Washington in my own version of John Q and holding the L&D midwives hostage until they agree to take the baby out of me, I'm out of feasible ideas. Sweet-talking, whining, poking, and bribing the baby haven't helped...neither, apparently, have all the contractions that like to make frequent and annoying visits like that acquaintance who's not really your friend that you always run into at parties, but you're too embarrassed and polite to say that you find them off-putting, socially awkward, and lacking in the finer points of personal hygiene.

My last-ditch plan is to wait it all out with the world's most patently false veneer of patience, and then - once baby truly tries my nerves and is 4 days late - I'll go to the movies again and see Anonymous and stubbornly sit through the whole movie, defying my offspring to display enough urgency in his/her arrival to oust me from the cinema before the end of the film. Go on, Baby...I dare you.