Walking

As many of you know Thursday was my due date, and well...She's still in there.

I had a doctor's appointment first thing in the morning where I learned that there was very little change going on. I'm barely over a centimeter dilated now however the doctor was able to touch the baby's head, that's good but not the most important thing that needs to be happening so slightly irrelevant as far as I'm concerned.

As soon as I was done with my appointment I drove across town to meet my friend Tiffany at the mall to walk. (She's a teacher and is out for summer and volunteered to assist me in getting this kid out!) We walked for six hours total. One of those hours was at a slightly slower pace because we shopped, but for the most part we kept good time.

I read somewhere that walking up stairs helps push the baby down so they are in better position to come out and going up stairs two at a time does an even better job of this. I don't know if any of this is scientific but frankly I didn't think it could hurt so every chance I got I chose the stairs over ramps. At one point is pretended I was five years old again and spent several minutes attempting to walk up the down escalator in an isolated corner of the mall.

So there we are it's Thursday night and I'm sure after all this walking I'm going to have a baby. I had some contractions, some close together, some serious ones. but in the long run, nothing substantial, and NO Addiston.

Friday morning rolls around and somehow I find myself at a different mall in another part of the city, despite my sweet husbands heed, (he is after all the one who had to rub my feet Thursday night). But like I said earlier, Tiffany is a teacher, what else is she gonna do?

From a source unrelated to the stair walking suggestion, I read that red raspberry leaf tea can induce labor. There happens to be a wonderful specialty tea store in Friday's mall, Teavanna-if you haven't tried it you should, it'll rock your world) so we stopped in and those girls already knew what I wanted. They had seen us pass by the store (a few times) and saw my hugeness and were more than eager to up-sell me on everything I even tried, and boy did they!!

We walked for four hours at a good pace before we stopped for lunch, at which I realized I was having some pretty regular contractions, (About ten minutes apart) both of us were pretty tired from the day, and previous day's activities, so we decided to just browse some stores in a strip outside the mall. I don't know if it was every type of hot pepper I got on my sandwich at lunch or the even keel of our pace after lunch, or possible the two cups of tea I had consumed throughout the day, but my contractions picked up big time. They were about five minutes apart and getting less than pleasant.

The best way I know to describe a contraction is the tightening of a muscle. slowly. At first it doesn't hurt, you can tell it's happening, but muscles are made to be flexed. It gets tighter and tighter until it really hurts and it's hard to breathe. Then after a while, it's slowly releases.

After I got home last night I continued having contractions, spread out a little bit more but increasing in intensity. The doctor's told me not to come into the hospital until they were five minutes apart and increasing in intensity for a few hours. So I waited. I was averaging about ten minutes apart through out the evening so no hospital for me.

So we wait, and we wait some more. and hopefully this baby girl will make her grand entrance sometime this weekend.

Oh and for those of you wondering, the average human walks at a pace of 2.7mph so in the past two days, Tiffany and I have walked over 24 miles. Just in case you wanted to know!