This kid… always full of surprises. I’ll cut to the chase: We had our beautiful baby boy, his name is Max, and everyone is healthy and elated!

But of course, my dearest babe had to keep us on our toes right up until delivery. As you all know, I was scheduled to have a C-section with my amazing OB on Wednesday; well, on the Sunday before (Canadian Thanksgiving), I was woken up at 7 a.m. with a crazy-ass painful contraction. It lasted a couple minutes, then passed, and I thought to myself, “Man, I hope that was just a one-off thing, ’cause it would really be a shame to miss out on turkey dinner tonight.” I rolled over in bed, felt the little guy move, which reassured me, and then my water broke. I was all, “Pee? … Lots of pee? …. FUCK FUCK DEFINITELY NOT PEE!!!” Ran to the bathroom, cleaned myself up, woke my husband, called triage, finished packing my bag, and bolted to the hospital in 8 minutes flat.

Once there, it was determined that I was 1 cm dilated and also that there was meconium in the water; this, coupled with the fact that I was now having contractions quite frequently, all led to a C-section happening about three hours later with an OB who looked to be about 19 years old. The C-section really deserves its own separate post — for a routine procedure, it’s an insane experience that I just did not anticipate, from the massive operating room to being strapped, Jesus-style, on a cross-shaped table, to a robust team of at least 10 doctors and nurses and other specialists, to the side effects of shaking uncontrollably, dry-heaving, weeping, and feeling totally unprepared to actually meet my baby, scared shitless that I wouldn’t love him at first sight.

Aaaaaanyway, it all went smoothly otherwise. Spent two nights in the recovery ward with a fantastic team of caregivers that made me get all warm and fuzzy about Canadian healthcare. Breastfeeding has, blessedly, been a cinch right from the get-go, I’m healing pretty quickly, and weirdly I could have been “that annoying woman” who’s able to walk out of the hospital in skinny jeans — my stomach is actually flatter than it was before I got pregnant (the nurse said five minutes after they stitched me up, “You’re bikini ready!”), and I have no idea how or why, but hey — I’ll take it.

As an aside, now that I think back on it, I should have known that our kid would arrive on the 13th, regardless of when we scheduled the C-section for — it’s kind of our lucky number, with hubby’s birthday falling on Sept. 13th, our wedding on Aug. 13th, and Max first making his presence known with two pink lines on a pregnancy test on Feb. 13th. As for it coinciding with Thanksgiving — well, it’s only appropriate. I can’t think of anything to be more thankful for than a healthy baby boy in my arms.

Will update again soon, but for now am trying to use every spare minute to sleep. There are so many of you who are at such critical times in your IVF cycles or pregnancies and I’m desperate to get back to reading/blogging, but for now, I gotta Max out. :)

Well, it seems Mine to Command, Infertile First Mom and Two Adults One Child all came the closest to guessing when I’d deliver (you all put in bets for somewhere between 38 and 39 weeks). My OB has decided that I may as well go ahead with this C-section next Wednesday, Oct. 16, when I’ll be 39 weeks exactly. So assuming nothing problematic happens before then, you can all mark your calendars (because I am THAT important in ALL of your lives). I should point out, too, that while Oct. 16 may seem like a rather boring day on which to be born, it turns out that junior will forever share his birthday with… wait for it… National Feral Cat Day (this year’s theme: Architects of Change)!

With five days to go until — knock on wood, spit everywhere — I have an actual baby in my arms, I can’t help but reflect on how insane it is that we’re finally here. That I’m living a life that includes a big round belly, a bassinet in our bedroom, conversations about diapering, prenatal classes and so forth; it’s a world I truly wasn’t sure I’d ever get to inhabit, and while I have at times gotten carried away with it and other times been blasé about it, I have never EVER taken it for granted. When I was in triage recently having my blood drawn, the nurse was stressed and distracted and started talking to a doctor while she was jabbing my arm; she realized that she’d fucked it up and that I’d be left with a nasty bruise. She was right, as evidenced by this poor-quality photo:

I shrugged and said, “Don’t worry about it.” Then she started tsk-ing and apologizing and warning me that it was going to get worse and could be quite sore and so forth — in the end, I was like, “Girl, I can guarantee that whatever the heck happens to my arm is nothing compared to the shit I’ve been through to get to this point in my pregnancy. I would happily start each day falling down a flight of stairs and getting covered in bruises if it meant I could be, and stay, pregnant.” OK, I may not have said these exact words, nor referred to the nurse as “Girl”, but you get the gist — I think every woman who’s gone through the torture of infertility would have the exact same reaction as I did upon being told that something might leave a bruise. Like, seriously, whatevs.

Anyway, Oct. 16 is fast approaching, and before I get sucked into a vortex of BAHHH-LOOK-AT-MY-BABY-OMG-LIFE-IS-AMAZEBALLS, I’d like to pause for a moment and say a humble thanks to all of you bloggy friends for being here with me through this journey, from the grossness of neon-blue Estrace leaking out of my lady bits to the challenge of seeing how fast I could administer my own shots… then to the sheer elation of seeing those two pink lines (which remains the highlight of my entire pregnancy, frankly)… and then the panic of not-quite-doubling betas, a bleeding episode that led to me cackling euphorically on the bathroom floor when I realized it was coming from my bum hole… and then further worry over echogenic bowel and the possibility that our fetus had Cystic Fibrosis… and then finally to now, when we’re about to bring what appears to be a perfectly average, perfectly healthy, 7-pound boy into the world.

It means a lot to have this support, even when it’s just a little comment here or there from a stranger on the Interwebs.

— Oscar acceptance speech over —

So stay tuned next week for exciting news! And if you have any tips when it comes to C-section recovery, feel free to share. I vaguely remember some of you talking about milk of magnesia or something to help prevent constipation and the importance of getting up and walking rather than lying in bed the whole time… can y’all remind me?

I named this blog Yeah, Science! because I am constantly impressed by the miracles science is able to achieve; it got me pregnant (thanks for nothing, temperature charting and raspberry leaf tea!), and now it’s totally keeping me pregnant. I was predicting, after the blood pressure ordeal, to have to deliver a pre-term baby — but then I started taking one tiny little pill, twice a day, and now I’m coasting along merrily toward the 38-week mark. As with nearly all phases of infertility, it was a moment of hurry-up-and-wait — there were about three days of MANIC rushing around, getting work stuff finished, getting the basement functioning again, assembling the nursery, installing the car seat, cancelling all social commitments, etc., and then each day allowed us to get more done, and then all of a sudden it occurred to us that we mighhhhhht just be ready for this kid to arrive. Like, now. How do I know that it’s officially time for baby? Well, mostly because my time on bed rest has transitioned from meeting deadlines and making calls to insurance adjustors to surfing the web for cute squirrel-themed artwork on Etsy and knitting pumpkin cozies. I mean seriously — I am knitting. sweaters. for. pumpkins.

SO JUST GIVE ME THE DAMN BABY ALREADY!

Some of you asked a while ago for nursery pics. I must warn, once again, that we are not one of those couples who just happened to have a spare room with white walls, ie. a blank canvas simply waiting to be attacked with tasteful Amy Butler fabrics and pastel bunting that spells out the baby’s name and mammoth gliders with matching ottomans. We also had a budget of, like, nothing. Therefore, consider this a warning for the images you are about to see. There is an orange wall. There is a green wall. There is deer wallpaper. There are paint-by-numbers. It’s basically the same ’60s cottage kitsch theme I had for my office. Also, you will note that we still don’t have a proper change table — this is because I continue to suffer PTSD from trying to source a changing pad that isn’t a) pastel coloured or terrycloth; b) $100; or c) bigger than the top of our dresser. Hence, we’ve got a sad, folded-up towel sitting there for now. Oh, and yes, those are two electrical sockets right above this area — we still need covers for those, of course. And yes, the monitor is currently affixed to the crib; it will be relocated to the window ledge eventually. Please don’t call Children’s Aid just yet — I promise we’ll get around to ironing out these details.

Anyway, here’s what things look like so far:

Note the stack of cloth diapers… scary, I know.

The IKEA Poang rocker… sans ottoman, but maybe one day.

Changing area with My Brest Friend. The watercolour depicts a radish because this was our nickname for baby (it came about whenever he was the “size of a radish”, according to our pregnancy app). This area is a bit sparse, obvy, and I also feel like we’re low on the product side of things — you can see we have baby powder and zinc cream and wipes, but should I be getting arnica? And vitamin D drops? And anything else?

Laundry hamper and our designer tote diaper bag.

All I can say is, this kid better have a fondness for retro decor… otherwise he’s gonna be all, “I think my stork got the wrong address, yo!”

Thanks for hanging in here with me in this final stretch — and let me know if I’m missing anything obvious in the nursery, or if you’ve got any tips for enduring another week of bed rest (now that Breaking Bad is over, there’s a major hole in my life. Don’t be surprised if we reveal the name of our son to be Jesse Pinkman).