Piglet Pie: Two and Fifty

I'm not talking downs and yards here. I'm talking centimeters and percentages.

Yes, as of my doctor's appointment this morning, I am officially on the long path towards baby-eviction. My cervix is 2 cm dilated and 50% effaced. For those new to the world of Bantering About My Cervix, a moment to clarify some terms. Throughout pregnancy, the cervix (which is basically just the neck at the bottom of the uterus) is about 1.5 inches thick and tightly closed. It feels, apparently, like the tip of your nose--a firm barrier between the little one and the outside world. As birthing approaches, the cervix begins to efface and to dilate. Effacement refers to ripening and thinning. The cervix becomes soft--more like, say, your lip or your earlobe, and flattens out--eventually to nearly paper-thinness. Dilation refers to the opening of the hole in the middle of the cervix. From that tightly closed and plugged up hole, my cervix has to stretch to ten centimeters diameter in order to get her big ole head out. Ten centimeters is a pretty large hole. It is, to be precise, a baby-head-sized-hole. It takes a lot of work to make a hole that big--a lot of work and, I'm presuming, a whole heck of a lot of pain.

The news of my ripening cervix came as quite a shock to me, though not for any good reason. I've been having tons of painless Braxton-Hicks contractions in the past week and a half, and a few times a day I'll have some contractions that cause me to wince in pain. For some reason, I was convinced that when Dr. Love checked me out I was going to be all closed up tight. But nope, these contractions have actually been doing some good work.

So now that things feel a bit more imminent, I'm suddenly aware of all that I need to do but have been putting off--calling up the pediatrician, packing our hospital bag, finishing my dissertation (let's see which of these is the first to get knocked off the schedule...).

But don't start camping out in the hospital waiting room just yet...while the baby could come literally at any moment, she also could easily stay in there another few weeks. Dr. Love said he's seen women walk around at 4 cm dilation for three weeks before finally going into active labor. We're basically living in the world of "hurry up and wait." But I love this proof that my body's getting ready, and it's pretty relieving to know that the painful contractions I've been having are actually doing the work they're designed to do.

The real question now is...to Putt-Putt or not to Putt-Putt? When my mother-in-law was three weeks away from her due date, her doctor told her that she was three fingers dilated (aka 3cm). That night, she and my father-in-law went out and played a rousing game of putt-putt (they are wild and crazy like that!) and sure enough, come the middle of the night, her water broke. The result of that Putt-Putt-Popping, my brother-in-law, is currently encouraging me to try the same Rapid Eviction Method. But I think Owen might be more inclined to convince our little one to cook a bit longer...

So the real question of the day--what's the opposite of Putt-Putt?