Not announcing a new arrival

For the past few days, I feel like somebody has emailed, called or stopped by every half hour to ask if there was any news.

People - if Squirmy had made an appearance, I promise I wouldn't keep it a secret.

Partly I'm to blame for this, I know. I was confidant that like the Critter, this new kid would be in a hurry to show up and arrive several weeks before his due date. In my defense, this optimism was confirmed by the opinions of various doctors, mid-wives and the ancient-and-learned-in-many-mysterious-things proprietress of my favorite Chinese restaurant in our village. But so far, Squirmy's showing every indication of being too comfortable where he is to be persuaded to an early arrival.

Last week, we went so far as to have an appointment scheduled at the hospital to induce labor. It wasn't the chemical inducement, but rather a manual procedure that basically consists of the doctor providing some 'mild encouragement' for labor to begin by poking the kid in the eye and seeing if he's ripe. The advice was that if this worked, labor would typically begin sometime between 6 and 72 hours after this procedure. Yeah, well, T + 112 hours, and nothing.

We're still a week and a half away from the 'official' due date, but hopeful but still hopeful that we'll get things over with a bit early. And when we do, I'll be having a conversation with the new Grady about the importance of not making people wait around on him.

Seriously. We've got things to do. Make an effort, kid.