Week 41.5: V Day February 16, 2008

V-Day to me usually means rolling out the usual answers to questions about whether The Beloved and I actually give a shit about a day nominated by a card company to make them more money than usual.

This year, V-Day took on a different meaning altogether. This year it became VAGINA DAY, and forever shall be known as such, not least of all because if there’s one thing I cannot stand, it’s a multinational corporation telling me when to tell someone I love them, and calling their nominated day VAGINA DAY is my little way of subverting yet another dominant stereotype but also my charming Australian way of shocking these slightly repressed British by using the word VAGINA on a day commonly associated with wee tiny cherubs and misty lighting. VAGINA DAY is now also known as that day where the midwife stuck two fingers up my jacksie to try and get El Laidbacko in there to shake a tail feather and actually come on out and deign to meet us sometime this century.

And so it was on a nippy day in a valley somewhere in the north of England, we waddled along to said V-Day appointment, cracking jokes about how it was time to start asking for refunds on this whole kid idea, then being distracted (me) by the shiny trash mags in the waiting room.

The procedure by which the midwife does indeed and literally stick two fingers up my jacksie is more professionally known as a ‘membrane sweep’ and just before she gloved up to do it she warned us that there was only a 50 per cent chance it would work, assuming the sproglet’s head was far enough down the downstairs department to complete the procedure in the first place.

The head was not. The midwife seemed indifferent to this fact. The midwife indicated that just having some traffic up that way might trigger labour anyway. The Beloved and I knew differently, we knew differently because this kid is never coming out and I am on the way to holding the world record for Longest Gestational Period of a Human Ever in the Universe.

So, in an effort to prevent me from holding my first ever world record, we are due at the hospital tomorrow, wherein another midwife will again stick two fingers up my jacksie and leave some labour-starting hormonal gel in there. And if that doesn’t work, they try it again, and then if it STILL doesn’t work, they get out the crochet hook to break the waters.

You read correctly. I wish I was joking about that part.

All things considered, The Beloved and I will be parents, godammit, however much this kid doesn’t wish it so, by Tuesday at the absolute latest. Stay tuned.