37 weeks

Last week I was playing with my 17-month-old niece along a riverside. I was holding her on my hip, standing between a busy road, a bike commuter path, and a steep precipice leading down to the river. At one point I set her down on the ground and turned to talk to my sister-in-law. After a split second I turned around to see what Emma was up to - and I couldn't find her anywhere! Panicked, I looked around frantically to see which child-endangering direction she had headed in that brief moment and couldn't see her at all. That's when my sister-in-law starting laughing at me hysterically and pointed to my feet. I stepped back and there stood Emma, right where I had placed her on the ground, standing directly beneath my bulging baby belly.

As my abdominal girth and tree-stump ankles indicate, we're in the final month. I'm 37 weeks pregnant and looking ahead with both great excitement and some trepidation. I can't wait to meet this little person, to look into his/her eyes, and even to have a birth story to share with other women. It's a surreal time of life to be sure.