It’s like they’ve already been through this

Kaity Holtman

Here we are, down to days away from our due date.

No weekly countdown anymore.

We’re down to four days away from the date we’ve been staring at for months.

When we found out we were pregnant, I downloaded this app to keep up on what to expect from week to week.

The app, based on the What to Expect When You’re Expecting book, tracks what day, week, trimester I’m in, based on my due date, a countdown to how many days and weeks left, and articles timed to help us through certain changes and parts of the pregnancy.

It even tells me how big the average baby is at that date, based on food. We’ve watched our baby grow from a sweet pea to a banana, now to a watermelon.

And yes, it is finally starting to feel like I’m carrying a watermelon around.

But I’ll be honest, when we started this pregnancy, I started following this app, and people started giving me advice or telling me their own stories.

I remember thinking to myself, “this is MY pregnancy. This app and these people surely can’t know what’s going on with me. Just take it with a grain of salt.”

But I’ll be darned if these experienced moms and this fancy app didn’t know exactly what they were talking about.

It’s like they had been through it before, or something.

Yes, I was aware that I was not the first pregnant woman of all time. But for a first-time pregnant momma, I thought I would be different.

I wasn’t.

I’ve actually been pretty textbook throughout the whole thing.

I got sick off and on through the first trimester and then it turned off, just like everyone told me it would.

The second trimester was the easiest, just like everyone told me to expect.

The kicks (which are the best part of pregnancy, just like people told me) started around week 18, just like they were supposed to.

A few weeks into my third trimester (around 30-32 weeks), it started to feel real, just like everyone said it would.

I quit sleeping well around then too, just like people warned me would be the case.

But one thing I was just sure everyone was making up was that the last month would feel like forever.

Once again, everyone was right.

Since about week 36, I’ve just been in constant waiting mode.

Being the organizer and planner I am, everything has been ready since then, so now I just wait.

I slowly finished up evening meetings and commitments to the point that now I just go home and think about this baby.

I know that’s healthier for the baby, to really take it easy at this point. But it also makes me feel like I’m doing nothing — but waiting.

In fact, my husband has to keep reminding me that we’re not even to our due date yet. It’s nice to feel somewhat prepared (as prepared as we can be) a few weeks early, but it also makes those last few weeks seem to take forever.

We both feel unsettled, just because it could be any day, at any moment now. And though we’ve never been through it, we’ve had plenty of advice and and stories. And while I want to ignore some of it, I’ve surely learned my lesson over the last nine months that there is probably a little bit of validity to these words from experienced moms, articles, and apps.

And though some stories could have very easily stressed me out or scared the living daylights out of me, I feel oddly calm and ready for our greatest adventure.