When I studied abroad in Jerusalem, my Old Testament teacher explained how numbers in the Bible often had more symbolic meaning than literal. The point I remember most vividly was that the number 40 didn't always mean 40, but usually meant "a lot", or in most contexts "a long time". Forty days, forty nights... who knows how long the rain actually fell? A long time, that's all that matters.
In human gestation, forty is used pretty much the same way. It's a fairly arbitrary measure as well because nobody can actually know exactly how long the baby's been a thing to be, health providers give such a wide definition to full term, and babies vary so widely in growth that size is really not a reliable measure of time. You can never really know how long the kid's been cooking when it comes out. When you hit "forty" weeks, it just means you've been pregnant a long time.
I've been pregnant a long time.
But there is a shockingly close end in sight. Child delivery has been one of those things, like getting married or graduating from college, that other people seemed to do a lot of and I imagined I'd probably do in the future but it was so far removed from my known world that I had no frame of reference to guide me in how it would be like when it happened. Now here I am on the veritable brink. Once again, life as I know it is about to shift and change forever in a moment.
Everyone keeps saying how things will change, yada yada yada. DUH. That is not useful knowledge. I've really enjoyed our required classes through the birth center that gave me facts: this is the range of normal in a baby, this is not. This is how you take care of normal, this is how you remedy not normal. They didn't bother telling us life will be different; they know we know life will be different.
We're the ones who made the decision to change it.
Admittedly, we cannot know exactly how it will be for us till it happens, but we'll learn what works for us and manage all right.
Lots of people from work have more of less demanded I share baby news upon its arrival. I've been more or less non-committal because probably the last people I'll make a priority to share with among my circle of acquaintance will be the accountant of the tenant who uses our downtown garage. They must not think about what they are really asking of new parents, but I don't want to be rude and point it out so, well, pointedly.
We'll share as we have news, then inclination and energy to spread it. I'm sure you understand, faithful readership.
