The shower is officially over and I’m working my last night at my second job before my due date, so as soon as 7 am comes and this shift is behind me, I’ll have nothing to focus on except waiting for the baby to come.

I’ve still got 12 shifts at my full time job scheduled because I, like most nurses, do not believe in taking any extra time off and am planning on working right up to my due date. I contemplated scheduling myself a few days after it, too, but decided not to push my luck. I’m already assuming my paycheck this week will be my last full time one and that I’ll go into labor before the end of the next pay period, so I spent most of Sunday clipping coupons and figuring out where all the cheap diapers are on sale this week (Dollar General).

And there’s labor to think about, of course. My birth plan is to take it one contraction at a time and see how it goes. Am I open to an epidural? Of course. Do I want one? Not at the moment, but if my labor is excruciating, I’ll do it.

(About that – I had a L&D rotation in school and have seen about a dozen live births. I also worked in an ICU for 3 years and have seen many, many spinal taps, nerve blocks, and epidurals. I know exactly what goes on back there. I’ve seen doctors miss and jab around in spinal space many times. It actually makes me more nervous than the pain does, so I’m all for trying to do it natural.)

What I can’t shake, though, is the fear of my water breaking at the most embarrassing time. For example, if it goes tonight when I’m at work, sitting in a leather chair that’s placed on someone-I-know-relatively-well’s newish carpet. Or when I’m at my full time job, rocking a preemie in a chair shared by all the staff and family. Or helping a family with a trach change on their toddler and all of the sudden, the flood gates open and my coworkers have to clean up the floor while I sit on several diapers and drive myself home to wake my husband to go to the hospital.

I would be mortified if this is a public event.

The not knowing when this is going to go down is driving me insane. Yes, I know not everyone has a water explosion. Someone I know with multiple children told me she had “two trickles and a gusher”, and I know it doesn’t always happen naturally.

But this is what I worry about now. Now that I know he’s safe, healthy, active, and in position, there’s not much else to focus my nerves on. It’s a much better place to be than where I was for my first trimester, when I was so afraid he was going to have any number of congenital problems I have seen way too many of and my blood pressure was so high, I had to monitor it at work and keep records for my doctor.

Soon, this will all be behind me and I’m pretty sure one day I’ll be at home alone with him and it will hit me that, holy shit, I have a baby and when did that happen? And it’s simple – it happened when I was so busy just worrying about everything else.

He’ll take all that away from me when he’s born. And then a lifetime of worrying about my son will begin. But just as seeing him at my first ultrasound immediately calmed me down and my blood pressure returned to normal, I think that having him here and watching him grow up will calm me enough to get through the worrying.

If nothing else, I’ll be able to stop wondering about ruining this leather chair.

Just about one month left in this pregnancy. I’m not hating it. But I am hating working full time while being massively pregnant and trying to get everything ready for his arrival.

This experience has taught me a lot of things, mostly good.

1. I have to drink 5 liters of water a day or I swell up like a balloon and start to get the shakes.

2. I can sleep through my husband’s snoring if I’m exhausted enough.

3. Despite working steady night shifts for 6 years, my default still is to want to sleep at night.

4. The day the baby flipped from being breech, it wasn’t beautiful or natural. It was freaky as hell and I panicked.

5. The next time I felt him make a huge movement, I liked it. So at least it only freaked me out once.

6. Being pregnant gets you admission to the mom’s club. This was something I didn’t expect. My mommy friends have been unbelievably supportive and have asked to see every ultrasound picture, speculated about what he’ll look like with me, and stared at my big belly in awe along side me as he sticks his bum out from under my right ribs every morning at 5 am when I’m at work. It’s nice having friends who understand exactly how beautifully weird all this is.

7. Mothers like to talk about being mothers because it does change you in a way you can’t understand unless you’ve been there. I’m just scratching the surface of this realization. I used to roll my eyes at women who said things like that, but it’s true. There’s no way it can’t change you, there is something living inside of you that you have no control over and it’s beautiful and weird. That doesn’t mean I have to become one of those people who obsesses over my kid and motherhood, but it’s naive to think that this isn’t going to fundamentally change who I am forever. It is. It already has.

8. If this had happened to me any earlier in my life, I would have had a hard time letting certain things and people go. But I lived that life already, the life of the bar fly, dive bar girl. Walking into the same bar again and having everyone know my name. It was great fun and I loved every second of it. But then I turned 30, and I fell in love, and I stopped being able to recover from hang overs, and I realized that maybe that part of my life was winding down naturally. Which is the best way for it to end.

9. There are things that are worth having an argument over and there are things that aren’t. When I got married last year, it was also the first time I ever lived with a man and I’ve found that most things couples argue over aren’t really worth it. I’d rather spend the evening cuddling with him on the couch than argue about whose turn it is to do the dishes. Even if that means the dishes wait a day. I intend to take this attitude into my parenting. Not everything I want to fight about deserves an argument. Too much time is lost in life being angry. I want to be a family who laughs and smiles as much as possible. And that will mean overlooking a lot of messes and hoping a lot of mine are overlooked.

10. Even though I didn’t think I’d need it, my pregnancy wedge has been my best friend for the last few weeks. I couldn’t sleep without it. And the 4 other pillows I need to prop up various parts of my body.

I never really liked it that much before, but I have to say, the thing I’m looking forward to the most is getting my body back. I can’t wait to sleep with just 2 pillows again.