“Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.” - Arthur Helps

That pretty much sums up why Half Price Books made me go into labor. Did I ever tell you that?

Ok..slight exaggeration. I didn't go INTO labor there. But, I blame them.

I had been home on workrest for 2 1/2 weeks when I couldn't take it anymore.

What is workrest, you ask?? Workrest is when your feet look like Spongebob Squarepants and your cankles would look at home on an elephant...then your doctor tells you it's time to stop chasing around the kinder-sweeties and get off your feet.

Luckily, after a few days at home the the swelling went down (and by "went down" I mean that five pounds worth of fluid went away). I finished nesting (not a long process as I was planning to work until 2 days before my DD and had gotten most things done during a lovely ice storm that cancelled school for several days). I puttered around the house pretending to do things so that TH wouldn't realize I mostly just slept in and watched Cr.iminal Minds, House Hunters and CSI all day. But finally, I just couldn't take it anymore. I felt great. My Braxton-Hicks had stopped and stripping my membranes hadn't accomplished anything. I had been the same amount dilated/effaced for 3 weeks. I WAS GETTING OUT.

So, I went to Half Price Books. I meandered around, buying a nice slew of chick lit, mysteries and a few "what to do after the baby comes" type of books. I figured that this would give me plenty of time to read up a little on what to do with the the little man whose feet lived in my ribcage and then read fun, mindless books until my induction (scheduled for three days after my DD...another story).

I came home, wiped off the kitchen counters (you know, making it look like I had accomplished something!) and took a nap. Later that night, I was wide awake (yay third tri insomnia) reading The Girlf.riend's Guide to the First year when *POP*...my water broke. I retrieved TH from the guest room (someone said I snored) and off we went on our new journey...

So, I blame HPB as why I went into labor 26 hours before my DD and mere hours after I SWORE to anyone that would listen that I wasn't giving birth anytime this decade. Way to make me look like a fool HPB :-)

Aren't you glad I shared this with you? I figured I would share this story since today I went back to HPBooks for the first time since that day. I had run out of books (well, ones not on my kindle) and had a coupon for $5 off. As I wandered through the aisles, I remembered that day...how hard it was to squat down and get books off the bottom shelf, how awkwardly I hauled my bag of books to sell around and how I was so sure I'd read them all before LM came.

Haha.

The funniest thing was when I saw a book that I sold back that day...on the clearance shelf, with the purple sharpie smudge on the spine from a minor sharpie mishap I had. It's amazing to me that in as much as my life has changed in the last four months, that book had sat snugly in its spot on the shelf, waiting for someone to take it home and love it. And in fact, hadn't changed at all.

There's a lot of uncertainty in life and there's a lot of fluidity. Some things are out of our control and some things we over-control. I used reading and book-shopping as a way of dealing with my uncertainty (and some ironically hubris-like certainty) about giving birth. I was avoiding thinking about what was actually about to happen...because I was sure it wasn't.

Getting off my ever-growing a** and going to Half Price Books that day was probably the "get up and move around" that I needed to jump start things. All the books on those shelves have seen a lot of people walk by since then...people sure and unsure about where their lives were taking them. They watch and wait for the right person. And someday, someone will buy that book and take it home to read and maybe love it...and hopefully not go into labor (unless they want to).

(I never did finish reading the book I was reading that night...maybe I should get to it!)