False labor

I am seven days out from my due date, belly big as beach ball, belly button stretched into near-non-existence, and I’ve decided this must be the night. I feel a contraction beginning, more than the simple hardening of the Braxton-Hicks variety that has been visiting me for a couple months. I even sense that I’m dilated. And I think back to the night nearly three years ago when Will, my first child, arrived smack-bam like a firecracker, with the contractions coming upon each other like accelerating waves until four and a half hours after the first one, Will was born.
This one could be quicker.
I was hoping to hold off until my mother arrives, her flight from Colorado is scheduled for six days from now, but now I am suddenly feeling the excitement of an imminent new baby. He seems to be working to arrive now, and after months of feeling sort of removed from him – largely because I’ve been so focused on the tangible, talking, antics-filled Will in front of me – I suddenly feel so connected, so full of joy for this new life that, despite how surreal it has seemed inside my belly, finally feels tangible to me now.
And then Will walks into our bedroom, a slow-paced half-awake toddler zombie, and says to Rob, “Daddy, I need to go pee-pee,” and as if those words somehow contained a deep wisdom, I start to cry. Cry with nostalgia at this boy who may be my only son for just one more night and for the miracle that is about to happen to us.
And then of course, it doesn’t. Just a twinge of false labor, which, I will find out soon enough, is especially common in second (or third or fourth) pregnancies. But I think it may have come to me as a reminder that I need to settle down, forget about work and housecleaning, and prepare to bring a baby into the world.