This would make a pretty cool labor story...

From The Belly Diaries, Sat, Aug 7th, 2010
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...if anything comes of it.

But I'm not getting my hopes up.

We've been on a mission in our household for the past few days. It's called "Get Pregnant Woman Into Labor By Any Means Possible".

While my duedate is still 10 days away, I'm on a timeline to encourage this baby to come early otherwise I have no choice but to do a csection on the 19th. So it is with much haste and creativity that we try to encourage this little guy to come early...

I've been pretty miserable. I can safely say that I have been the most exhausted I've ever been in my life. And it's kind of weird - since I'm normally a person who has multiple lists of things to do and can multi-task like a crazy woman.

Lately I can lay down for 2 hours and not even feel any sort of motivation to get up. Even if I don't sleep...just laying there feels good.

Despite not feeling good, I'm determined to get this labor started ya'll. (sorry just thought of the song "Let's get this party started ya'll!").

Thursday morning, Preston and I went for a nice long walk up our driveway and back. I know - you're laughing because I just said driveway. Except our driveway is 1/4 mile long, so up and back is 1/2 mile.

Friday night, Will, Preston, and I all went up the driveway and back TWICE. So make that 1 whole entire mile.

And today we decided to try the labor inducing trick of "bumpy car rides".

This, of course, got Will really excited because hello it involved going off-roading into the wilderness on unexplored gravel roads where no man (or pregnant woman) may have been before.

The trip started off with a stop to Subway, where we each picked out foot-long subs and devoured them within a half hour, including 3 cookies and ice water. I admit, my appetite has been like a lion lately, but even that footlong was a bit much for me. My stomach felt like it had been stretched to new lengths afterwards -which is really saying something.

So with an entire footlong Italian combo Subway sandwich sitting in my stomach, we embarked on our adventure onto a forest logging road into the mountains.

Once we finally left paved road and hit gravel, I thought Okay this isn't going to be so bad. But as we got further and further away from civilization, the road got bumpier and bumpier.

"Ughhhh", I would say with a laugh.

Preston was in the backseat saying "Bump! Bump! Funny!" while giggling. And all three of us were laughing at my discomfort, while talking to the baby in my belly trying to encourage him to come out.

Driving on a bumpy road is uncomforable enough when it's paved, while pregnant, so to do it on gravel with pot holes and washboards...well, all I can say is you must be desperate to go into labor to do it.

Eventually, I stopped laughing and it no longer was funny (though Preston and Will were still laughing).

I was just getting annoyed.

"Okay, can you just stop the car for a second? I just need a moment of no jiggles." I asked.

Will stopped the car, and I still felt my body vibrating as if I'd been on some sort of carnival ride. It felt pretty good to not ride on that stupid bumpy road any more.

Eventually we started going again, and so did the bumps, and well so did my bladder.

"I need to pee, can we pull over really soon?" I said, super anxiously, as my bladder went boingedy-boingedy-boink.

We pulled over and because I'm super smart and well prepared, I brought my own roll of toilet paper. Only I didn't forcast that going to the bathroom in the woods camping-style was not as easy while 9 months pregnant. To save you the details, I will just say that I had to take my pants and underwear completely off while hoping another car would not drive by and see me completely birthday-suited from the waist down.

Sorry, but when you have to go you just do what you need to do.

While I was taking my woodland potty break, I hear this hissing sound coming from our car."By the way, the back tire is leaking air like crazy." I tell my husband as he's waiting for me.

He looks at me like No way are you serious kind of look, and goes to check.

Sure enough our back left tire is loosing air at an amazing rate and going flat.

Good thing we're in the middle of no where because this scene would not look rediculous at all to passerby'ers. Not at all. Me, 9 months pregnant going to the bathroom half naked and my husband tearing our car apart to get the spare out to change our flat tire on our VW Jetta (every other vehicle we'd seen was a huge pickup truck).

We were stopped for about a half hour while Will so galantly changed the tire, while Preston and I wandered around (I was dressed by this point thank you very much).

Then it started to rain. Like hard.

I brought Preston's yellow rainjacket for him, but neither Will and I had any jackets. So we got soaked while Preston had a hayday trying to "help" Papa change a tire.

Eventually all was well once again and we all got back into the car.

I was actually pretty ready to turn around, but Will wanted to go further because "We don't know what's around the next corner" (said in a little boyish pretty-please sort of voice).

All I could imagine was getting yet another flat tire, and this time not having a spare, me going into labor, and we are stuck in the middle of no where.

Luckily that didn't happen.

To make this story a tad bit shorter, we eventually turned around and started home. Only we had to go back all those bumps that we'd already crossed and so I got jiggled around once again. And I will say by that point I was NOT HAPPY about it.

Why? Because our "Let's go for a bumpy car ride" ended up being a 3 HOUR bumpy car ride.

3 hours!!

We're back home now. And all I have to say is if this adventure didn't jumpstart something inside me I'll be pretty upset.

Obviously, I'm sitting here typing a blog instead of going into labor so as of right now nothing's happening.

But if something does happen, it will make a pretty funny labor story.....you know, the time that we tried to get mama to go into labor, went up the mountains, had a flat tire, she was miserable but later that night she went into labor.

That would be pretty sweet actually.