Baby Number Two Is Officially Past Due

They say that patience is a virtue. I’m sure it is.

Unfortunately, I’ve always been a big fan of instant gratification. This makes the nine-month journey of pregnancy–a beautiful and wondrous experience, to be sure–just a little bit torturous towards the end for a guy like me. “Are we there yet?” takes on a much more drastic meaning when you are talking about bringing a new life into the world.

Our second child has seemingly decided to try my patience at his earliest convenience. April 28 was the due date, and all signs pointed to this being a very accurate due date. But you can’t rush art, and my boy has decided he needs to cook a little longer. So the day has come and gone, and he is now officially past due.

Please note that the above is written with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. I have absolutely nothing to complain about. First off, I’m not the one carrying around a seven-pound-plus baby–that burden is being selflessly shouldered by my beautiful wife. Secondly, our baby is by all accounts completely healthy and just enjoying his stay in utero, and that’s something that I in no way take for granted.

His tardiness is also granting us a measure of leisure and enjoyment that I’m not quite sure why I’m in any rush to extinguish. Here’s a rundown of how we spent the due date:

• We slept until 9:30 a.m. when Maddie woke up¹
• I took Maddie to the park while Theresa got a haircut
• We watched the Cubs game while Maddie napped
• We went to see The Avengers while my family watched her
• We went out to dinner with Maddie at an Irish pub after the movie[/note]She was literally yelling “FRIES!” when the waitress came to take our order.[/note]
• We put Maddie to bed and played two rounds of Settlers of Catan

This is not the life of parents who are caring for a newborn. This is barely the life of parents who are caring for a toddler. We are incredibly lucky to be such parental anomalies.

We also have very few² responsibilities or obligations on our calendar at the moment, as we assumed we would be preoccupied with more infantile pursuits by now. This puts us in the enviable position of being in a limbo state of doing whatever we want to do, provided Maddie is willing to go along with it…and she usually is.

Given all of that, our son should know just how excited we are to meet him, since we would willingly forgo all of the above to do so. Honestly, a few things on that list were vain attempts to get the labor party started. We walked around our neighborhood a bit this afternoon and after the movie. We tempted fate and saw a nearly three-hour action movie in a theater. We played Settlers of Catan–and I actually beat Theresa 14-5, an occurrence that is so rare and had to be so frustrating to her that I was certain we would at least get a few rapid-succession contractions for my victorious efforts.³

But Saturday night has turned into Sunday and here we are–feeling no closer to labor and delivery than we were a week ago at this time. With Maddie coming three days early, we had been mentally and emotionally prepared for that to happen again. Now the pendulum has swung in the other direction. We are resigning ourselves to attending the next doctor’s appointment on Tuesday to ensure that he’s still doing well in there. We have even been wondering aloud about whether we will have to schedule an inducement for a week from now.

That said, we both agree that we would love one more peaceful, easy Sunday, if he would like to spend one more day in his fetal paradise. Sunday is a day of rest, after all. So we won’t push things today. We’ll just see what happens. But if we play Catan again, I’m still going to try to win.

1. She was up late the previous night, but she generally sleeps in pretty often. She has set completely unrealistic expectations for her little bro.
2. Actually, zero.
3. Full disclosure: She beat me in the first round and *I* had some contractions.