How to make a pregnant woman uncomfortable (and hopefully put her in labour).

On Sunday my family (plus sister-in-law Eireann) went to the zoo. If you've ever been to the Toronto Zoo, you know that it involves a lot of walking. If you've ever been in the middle of winter, than you're just as crazy as I am. As a rule, if you're eight and a half months pregnant, and it's really cold out, you probably shouldn't spend the day at the zoo. Having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, especially with Eireann there as an extra toddler-chaser.

The next day, as Adam was leaving for work, he casually announced that our cordless phones weren't working and I needed to plug in a land line. Once he had left, I began to panic. I didn't know where the corded phone was. What if I went into labour? What if I had some other emergency for which e-mail was too slow? Unfortunately, the phone was where I thought it was: in the crawl space. As the name suggests, the crawl space is a space that can only be accessed by crawling (or bending over at an odd angle). Ours takes up half the basement and is, especially for someone in my delicate condition, a back-pain-inducing nightmare. I totally blamed my husband for making me do this. I'm going to go into labour right here, thought I, won't Adam feel bad then! After I plugged in the phone, I decided I was going to totally overwork myself and put myself into labour, just to show him! So I put away one load of laundry, then got tired and lazy and went on the computer.

Today, to add to Sunday's excessive walking, I went to the mall with William's good friend Aedan and his family (Aedan's parents have been my friends since kindergarten). The good thing about toddler-malling with a gang is that there are plenty of toddler chasers. And of course, in my delicate condition, it's perfectly acceptable for me to walk at a leisurely pace, while others take on the task of running after my son (who has only two speeds: sprinting and dead stop).

After all this walking and crawling and walking, I now feel excessively pregnant. My gigantic uterus is sore. It hurts when I walk, stand up, or when a certain toddler takes flying leaps at my belly. When I was pregnant with William, I didn't feel like this until after my due date, fairly close to the time I was induced. At the time I blamed my doctor for doing a membrane sweep and bruising my insides. Now I have noone to blame but myself.

My friend Becca (Aedan's mommy) recently directed me to a site that boasted "Jump start your labour cookies". When I mentioned this to my Mom, she said "Ahh! Don't do that. If something is wrong with the baby you'll never know if that was why." However, having very low hopes that a cookie recipe (one that contains no cocaine or pharmaceuticals) will have any effect, and taking my current discomfort as a sign that labour is imminent, I made them anyway. They're basically ginger cookies with a little cayenne pepper in them to make them spicey. So if I do go into labour in the next 24 hours, I'll totally credit my baking (or, you know, the hours and hours of walking in the last few days.)