Playing the Waiting Game

I have been on 5 days of maternity leave already and I don’t know where the time has gone! I swear that sitting at home ‘doing nothing’ is busier than anything I’d do in a full day of work. Let’s just say that I’ve hardly had anytime to sit and do nothing – the days just seem to fill themselves with stuff to do! I’m starting to worry about how quickly my 4 months of maternity leave are going to just fly by! Jaco has ensured that I don’t get bored by giving me a to-do-list as long as my arm which included the following:
- make dinner every night
- buy food to stock up the cupboards so no shopping needed in the next 4 months
- vacuum the car so Milea can have a clean, comfortable ride home from the hospital
- pack the hospital bags AGAIN and double check I have everything (3 jam-packed bags so far…and possibly need for a 4th one)
- see friends one last time before life of a non-mother ends

So as you can see I’ve been pretty busy!

This week was crunch time in terms of whether I had enough amniotic fluid in order to go to full term of 40 weeks. The gynae visit yesterday confirmed that my amniotic levels have increased and baby is now around 3kgs. So all is good in Camp Cronje! In general, she is very happy to let me go to full term and no induction is necessary at this stage. The waiting game begins. Jaco and I are not very good at playing this game so we’ve decided to help Milea along into this world by practicing some tried and tested methods of inducing labour or some might say, plain old wive’s tales:
- Jaco made me eat a whole pineapple for breakfast. Pineapple is said to have an enzyme called Bromelain which is the key ingredient to forcing labour. My mouth is now rather raw!
- I walked the Sea Point Promenade ‘stukkend’ yesterday with the hope of bouncing her head on my cervix so it would open up. I did have lots of Braxton Hicks contractions thereafter so it must have done something
- Stimulating a whole lot of other areas of the body which we won’t go into!!
- The only thing left to do is eat a hot curry so Tandoori night, here we come!

Essentially, it is down to her own timing and we should really be enjoying the last few days of just the 2 of us. But naturally I have this urge to be in control and know when things are going to happen so I can plan my life a little. Waiting for the inevitable is so hard to do and not being in control is even harder. I think she is trying to teach us a well-deserved lesson of patience……