Just being honest

My friend, Susanna, and I have had a fun time these past nine months watching the differences between our two pregnancies and enjoying the fact that we had picked out the same boy name and talking about how funny it will be if we go into labor on the same day.
It's been interesting (and maybe a tad depressing for me) to watch the difference in how our bodies were *ahem* handling the pregnancy. This is me at 9 months:

I know you are thinking to yourself, "Well, you don't look that big. You look fine. Cankles? What cankles?"  Well, let me show you Susanna and maybe you can see where I am coming from.

Susanna at nine months:

And now you are saying, "Oh. I see." And yes, this is her first baby and this is my fourth. And yes, she has been running marathons her entire pregnancy and I have been running around town trying to locate the best Dr. Pepper or Mr. Pibb and ice combination. (Steffey's Pizza wins, by the way.) But still, it doesn't exactly make me feel like a cutsie little petite pregnant woman.  Especially when I really am supporting some nice cankles. (On a side note, while they are very unappealing and unattractive, they are exceptionally easy to shave. No ankle bone to work around.)

Saturday night I was up for 6 hours with what I call Level 2 contractions. Level 1 are your normal braxton hick contractions. They might make you stop and wince a little but they aren't really going to slow you down. Level 2 contractions are the ones that you endure when you are really in labor and are being monitored as you sweat it out at the hospital. They are the ones that you have to close your eyes and breathe through. Level 3 contractions are the ones you have after your water breaks. I won't describe those. 

So anyways, I was up all night with Level 2 contractions. I have never had contractions that painful before while still at home. They were some serious ouchie. I finally started timing them early in the morning and they were always two or three minutes apart. Around 8am I decided to call the doctor and see what she thought about everything. When she called me back, I got up to go talk in my room to diminish the background noise and the contractions just stopped. Cold turkey.  So I went to church and then went to my parents for lunch and took a long walk in the afternoon. And I did everything in my mental power to get those contractions back up and running. Guess what? My mental power level is apparently zero. I mean nothing was going on. And it was depressing and I have tried since then not to let it get me to the point of crying but I can feel the tears waiting for the tiniest excuse to come on down.

And then I got a phone call this morning. 

Susanna had her baby. Three weeks early. Her water broke and four and a half hours later she was holding her baby boy. 

I'm so excited for Susanna, Aaron and their new little Jack. I can't wait to see pictures and listen to her tell the story of his birth. 

But maybe, just maybe, I'm a little depressed today.