We’re sort of crunchy-granola natural-ish around here when it comes to our health. At least I think we are. But you know what? It is way easier to ascribe to a hands-off philosophy when everything’s going well than when things are a little off. I can confidently say, “eh, who needs Tylen0l for a fever, let the body do its thing” when no one has a fever, but the second someone gets sick, I start second-guessing that whole plan. Just for example.

And when I’m pregnant, I’m usually able to look rationally at routine tests and logically decide whether we want them. How accurate is the test? How reliable? Is there some reason to think I might need it? Will the results change the course of care we choose? And then we make a decision based on that information. And that works for us, usually. But usually I’m normal and healthy and boring.

So right now I’m having a hard time figuring out what the logical choices are. We can’t find anything amiss (my thyroid is quite functional, I’m sure you’re glad to hear), but as it turns out—and perhaps you already knew this—no matter how physically comfortable you are (or aren’t), nobody likes to be 43 weeks pregnant, even if you don’t necessarily believe in the numbers anymore. No caregiver, no matter how laid-back and trust-your-body-ish, likes for your chart to read 43 weeks pregnant. Suddenly a whole bunch of new informed consent forms make an appearance; we have to get or refuse tests and procedures we’ve never even been offered before. I’m finding this a little bit stressful.

And one of our midwives is supposed to go away for a month, starting this Thursday. We were supposed to have delivered by now, so she would have had plenty of time to be at the birth and the postpartum visits before taking off on her very-cool-sounding adventure. Except we haven’t delivered yet. And, um, I want her to be at the birth. Sigh.

Today we were joking about having a Halloween baby—it’s only two weeks away! And wouldn’t our older kids be irked! They may end up irked anyway—I’m not taking a less-than-two-week-old out on the town for our usual parade of grandparent visits and parties.

Hmm. I don’t think this post is going anywhere. I’ll summarize like this: I’m cool with letting things happen when and how they happen, but I wish I had some more idea of what that’s going to look like. And I wish I had an alarm bell that would go off if I needed to do something in the meantime. (Does fetal heart rate count as an alarm bell? Because it’s doing just fine. Not alarming at all.)