I have officially arrived at what might be considered the Bargaining Phase of pregnancy, where I start thinking the baby will be born only after I [fill in the blank with increasingly bizarre tasks that no baby could ever possibly care about: get a dresser for more kid clothes, reorganize the playroom, dust the ceiling fan, remove cobwebs from ceiling corners inside closets].

So I wash baseboards and clean full-length mirrors and pack away too-small sneakers and pinch off the flowering ends of the basil plants and dust all the light bulbs in the house (!), just in case that was the thing the baby was waiting for me to finish.

This never works. Never once have I gone into labor after finishing an obscure-but-obviously-necessary feat of nesting. In fact, when Sadie was born, much of our house was in complete disarray. She managed to arrive when she was ready anyhow.

Someone should point this out to me later, when I’m soaking the shower curtain liners in vinegar and washing the top of the refrigerator, okay? Because my feet are swelling up like… well, like swollen pregnant lady feet, and I really would prefer they didn’t.

So let’s try this mantra: the baby is waiting for me put my feet up and comment on more blogs. The baby is waiting for me recline and tweet something. If I lie down and spend much of the day updating my facebook status, the baby is sure to come. (This is at least as good a strategy as the other one, yes? Worth a try?)