39 weeks 1 day

Still pregnant! The baby will be here in less than 2 weeks because my doctor wants to induce around 41 weeks if I go that long (although I may see if I can hold her off another day or two if I go that long..which I don't think I will).  I'm between 2 and 3 centimeters dilated and almost fully effaced as of this morning.  We've finished pretty much all the baby preparation, except that we might go to a baby consignment sale tomorrow and get some more clothes for larger sized babies (we got a ton of newborn/0-3 month clothes at the shower but not much for bigger babies). Assuming I don't go into labor before then.

Had a scare around 3 weeks ago when they found out the baby was in footling breech- one of the scariest kinds of breech (feet down- results in stillbirth 10% of the time when having a vaginal birth) which would have meant a scheduled c section. But for about a week after that I did all sorts of inversions and exercises and weird things to try to get her to flip to head down, and she had by the next appointment, and has stayed head down since then. I think the one that finally worked was when I took a hot bath and submerged the bottom half of my belly while putting an ice pack on the top half- during the bath she moved around a lot and later that afternoon I could feel her hiccuping in the bottom half of my belly instead of the top (when she hiccups only her head moves).

I stopped working around a week ago, and have spent most of this week lying on my couch re-reading the wheel of time series, since I just procured the final book in the series and I always said I would re-read the whole series (14 books) when I got the last one. I figure maternity leave is a good time to get on that, since I don't have to work.  I always feel a little bit guilty about reading stuff not for work when I do have to work, cause I have so much reading to do for work that I could be doing instead. I'm now about halfway through book 4. 

Speaking of work, this summer I submitted 5 articles + an encyclopedia entry for review (4 for first review and 1 "revise and resubmit") so even though I'm not working anymore this summer (which means I'm finishing summer work a month earlier than I usually do), this has been the most productive summer of my life. I think the baby deadline/nesting instinct just inspired me to finish a whole bunch of stuff. I have all of Fall semester off as "research leave" (and then "maternity leave" in the spring when I will teach 1 class instead of my normal 3) and I'm hoping to start working again around October, and write 2 new papers and revise a dissertation chapter, with plans to submit all 3 of those for review before the end of the academic year. I also hope to be working on more "revise and resubmits" from the stuff I've already submitted (and I think the "revise and resubmit" I submitted this summer has a very good chance of being accepted for publication). I was able to delay my tenure clock by a year because I'm having a baby, but if I can get 3-4 of these 5 articles accepted for publication within the next 2 years I will go up for tenure at the regular time anyway, since delaying tenure just means delaying a raise, and that's more publications than I need for tenure.