Awhile ago I was sweep­ing the back from all the leaves that come down on us in autumn, which is one of the neg­a­tive part of hav­ing so many trees around. Flippidy-Flop and an ALIEN bounces from the pile I am sweep­ing and I jump about like a scared cow, or at least as I assume one such crea­ture would, and pause. And wait for the attack, which inevitably fol­lows in such cases. Nothing. I approach the strange crea­ture, slowly and care­fully.  What in the world is that, I am think­ing to myself and try to hold my shak­ing hands still.  It just stays there, stalk­ing me, star­ing at me with its, what?, painted on eyes. It looked cute in a weird squishy, butt with a thorn kind of way. I poked it with a stick and it did noth­ing, just looked at me with those pre­tend I am not a cater­pil­lar eyes.

I knew the girls would love to see this, so I cov­ered it with a nearby clear plas­tic tray and went on with my busi­ness, although now some­what freaked out and look­ing around for other crea­tures that may want to jump at me. Definitely not one of my proud­est moments.

The kids loved it. Mr.Blab poked it, with his fin­ger! , and they decided we should keep it for a bit and we piled up a selec­tion of leaves and branches in there and cov­ered it up.

Then a few days later the lit­tle bug­ger decided to change the game and turned pupa on us. It had made a lit­tle tent like area from the leaves, which were now stuck to the pave­ment on the edges and in the tent was the lit­tle wrapped up package.

We had no plans to keep it for long, but now we had no choice, we didnt want to leave it unpro­tected, so we left the cover on and checked up on it from time to time.

Nothing seemed to happen.

For awhile.

Then one day our check up revealed the sad end­ing to this short story.

Sorry, fella.

If it helps, you were one won­der­fully beau­ti­ful moth and now I have a new appre­ci­a­tion for your kind.

Moths Rock!

For me this started on the two days before the actual birth at 10:40pm when I lost some of the plug. I know it usu­ally doesn’t mean much, but it has now proven to be a very good sign for me. A very good one for impend­ing labour indeed.

That night I was hav­ing some reg­u­lar con­trac­tions, but noth­ing too painful, just enough to be noticed. I thought things might be hap­pen­ing, so got up after try­ing to sleep for awhile. They were com­ing about every 4–6 min but weren’t con­vinc­ing enough, so I went back to bed.

Next Day

The day started as nor­mal. I went with Miss Fab to our usual cof­fee and hot choco­late outing.

I had more con­tract­ing dur­ing the day. Again, noth­ing major, but just that much more intense than nor­mal Braxton hicks.

Lost more plug at 2:50pm.

We went to a par­ent meet­ing for Miss Fab’s preschool that night and I remem­ber one of the teach­ers ges­tur­ing at me — ask­ing me if I am in labour, jok­ingly. I have been mov­ing around my chair try­ing to get com­fort­able dur­ing the con­trac­tions and she must have sensed me. Near the end I stood up to walk around a lit­tle bit and another of the teach­ers came to me and said its ok if I leave. I said I am fine, but they basi­cally kicked me out with care, plus Dad was get­ting bored and didn’t com­plain at all.

We got home at around 8:30pm, had a quick din­ner and while Mr.Blab  put future big sis­ter to bed I went for a walk around the block.

Later on, while talk­ing to my mom for an hour I started writ­ing down the contraction’s tim­ings out of curios­ity. Mr.Blab came by to check what I was doing and his face went pale and he pointed at the times I had writ­ten down on the paper (every 5–10 min) and asked „what is this?” with big anx­ious eyes. I said „don’t worry, noth­ing yet, been hav­ing them since last night”. I had every­thing under con­trol and didn’t need his wor­ries to bur­den me and I think that is why I had been keep­ing quiet.

I did a few things around the house. At 10:50pm decided to send a mes­sage to my friend, who was going to be my daughter’s sup­port per­son dur­ing the birth, and tell her that there is a pos­si­bil­ity of some­thing hap­pen­ing soon, but def­i­nitely not any­thing cer­tain. It was get­ting late and I wanted her to be pre­pared for a rude awak­en­ing some time in the night.

10:55pm more plug out.

I went to have a shower.

My friend called and Mr.Blab  brought the phone in the bath­room. She was get­ting excited, but since I really wasn’t sure if the birth is immi­nent I was try­ing to dampen her enthu­si­asm and didn’t want her to be keep­ing awake in antic­i­pa­tion. It was nice to talk to her though, and her excite­ment was lovely and made me giddy as well.  After get­ting off the phone, I had my shower, which felt won­der­ful. The water run­ning down that ripe body is some­thing not to be missed.

11:40pm I made myself a quick dark rye and hum­mus sandwich.

Mr.Blab asked me if I still wanted my bath, as we talked about ear­lier in the day. Sure!

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