"Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air, we wawl and cry." *

All that contracting and pressure and ouchies, and so out of breath last night that I couldn’t even sleep, and I am still only 1 cm. SO unfair. But my blood pressure was waaaaaayyy up – because today’s appointment and next week’s appointment had been cancelled – NOT by me – and my chart was missing.

Remember when I told you – did I tell you? – that I told H that he had to remember one thing, that I was strep B positive this pregnancy? And he said, “Well, it’s not as if it’s not in your chart. And how am I supposed to remember that?” And I glared at him and said, “*I* will be in labor. Surely you can remember ONE MEASLY LITTLE THING if I ask you to.” (He looked suitably abashed and mumbled, “Yes, but don’t call me Shirley.”) And there I go this morning, with NO CHART.

No wonder my normally lovely low blood pressure was 140 over 100. But they found the chart and resolved the appointment issue – turns out that the fact of a simple phone call – by me - to suss out the situation at my old doctor’s new practice was enough to cause appointments to be cancelled and charts to be moved, even though I had signed no release forms or cancelled any appointments my own damn self. Jesus Crisis.

When they rechecked my blood pressure before sending me home – no closer to labor than when I’d arrived – it was back to normal. So, I am still contracting, and am still hurting, and can’t breathe, and am very very VERY grumpy, and can’t even think about food, but I am apparently NOT about to have a baby, say, anytime in the next 24 hours. Dammit.

I zipped through The Wednesday Wars last night, though, so must replace that on my hospital stack. I LOVED it. I want to own it, will definitely reread it, and it prompted me to hunt down a copy of The Tempest to reread. I don’t know what happened to my pretty little blue clothbound Yale Shakespeare volume, but I dug out one of my volumes of the teeny red leather Works of Shakespeare – the ones that turn my fingers red, like dyed pistachios do - and started in. (I wasn’t about to lug around my Riverside.) So yeah, I am such a dork that I lay in my doctor’s examining room on my left side, waiting for my blood pressure to decrease, and read Shakespeare.

I thought I had more to say but in the hour since I started writing this post, I have started experiencing what may well be real contractions. So I'll wrap up now and go lie down. And wait for H to return from the car dealership. I called him at work and asked him to bring me a vanilla milkshake, but apparently he got distracted and is bringing me a blue minivan instead.

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*King Lear, Act 4, sc. 6, 179–180