Keep that cradle empty a LITTLE longer, please!

I just got back from my 36 1/2 week midwife appointment and had my first "internal exam", which is basically to determine if my body has been up to anything lately...since we're drawing nearer to the due date. And it seemed like my body had been up to A LOT. His head is already engaged down in my pelvis, I'm dilated 1 cm, and my cervix is already about 20% effaced. Wow. I had been having mild cramps & back pain, but just thought it was my body getting pumped up...not actually producing changes this early on. So that's exciting, BUT the bad news is that my midwife will be going out of town this Friday through the next Friday and she's instructed me to do WHATEVER I can NOT to go into labor...since she wants to be there for our birth :0) And we want HER there!! If I did go into labor during that week, I wouldn't be able to have the baby at the birth center like we'd been planning. I'd have to have him at the hospital with a midwife I didn't know and who wouldn't know me. Which is not what we'd hoped for. So PRAY that this little boy with be happy to stay inside me at least for another two weeks! He's free to come after August 6th, in my opinion, but PLEASE NO SOONER! We suddenly got the jitters when we realized this thing was really happening. My body is really preparing to bring this baby into the world. We will have a son in a month or sooner. How wild.

So I'm going to try to take it easy - not go to the gym this week, stop taking my "prep" vitamins she had me on to get labor rolling, stop drinking my prego tea. All these things she was urging me to do a few weeks ago, she told me to halt for now since my body obviously isn't having any problems getting ready or being sluggish at all. Pray for us as we wait these next few weeks and hope for labor to be delayed until Barbara returns...and for our hearts if that's NOT in God's plan, to be flexible to go with what He does provide over these next few weeks. I'll keep you all posted :0)