With Baited Breath . . .

My sweet husband calls this "The Holding Pattern." "Circling the runway."
Fairly accurate, I believe. After all, I am beginning to feel rather like a passenger jet.

I am still waiting for my daughter.

I remember feeling similar to this with Caleb . . . though, not quite so, "enough already . . ."

Where as with Caleb, even at 42 weeks (yes, my son was two weeks overdue) I still was able to maintain that giddy-excited feeling, this time I am simply done. Not that I am not excited—I am! I can't wait to meet this child, to hold her, to kiss her tiny rosebud lips, smell her skin and her hair, to hold her tiny but substantial weight against my chest . . . I can't wait for this . . . but tonight—at 12:34am as I sit here at my computer, unable to sleep once again due to the contractions that never get any closer than eight minutes apart—tonight, I am simply tired.

I know it has a lot to do with the bed rest experience . . . believing that after I ceased taking the required meds that kept this baby inside when she tried to come far too early, after I resumed normal activity following a month of bed rest, she would come—perhaps immediately! Obviously, such was not to be the case. And so I feel as though I've been in labor for the past eight weeks . . . which may actually be the case!

I shoveled the driveway this morning . . . after going to the gym . . . and doing three loads of laundry (carrying each basket up and down two flights of stairs for good measure). Surely this would have an affect, I told myself. And it should have, save for one thing: it is not time.

I ran into a dear friend of mine at the grocery store tonight and after the sympathetic greeting and the "Yes, I'm still pregnant" acknowledgement, she reminded me that my Heavenly Father has already ordained the day and time of this child's birth—even as He ordained my own. "She will come at exactly the right time," said my friend. And she is right.

No amount of gym sweat, snow shoveling, laundry, repetitive floor scrubbing, or spicy food will make this child come any more quickly. She will come at exactly the right time—the time ordained.

And until then, I will continue to wait with baited breath, to count contractions, and to anticipate that first kiss, that first sweet breath— my first look at my daughter.