This guy is totally going to call.

He seems like someone you'd like to get to know better. You give him your number. You hope with fingers crossed and breath held that he'll call. You hesitate to make plans with friends, instead leaving your calendar open. (You have obviously never read "The Rules.") You jump every time the phone rings. But it's not him, and it's not him again, and again. And gradually your hopes begin to fade until one day you accept the simple truth: he's never going to call.

***

A few weeks ago, we started dancing around accepting invitations for dinners, outings, apéros: "Well ... we don't want to commit, but we'll be there if we can." Or perhaps, with a coy wink, "Okay, but we might have to cancel at the last minute." Imagining, hoping, wishing ... that the guy would call, that the baby would come.

But he doesn't, baby doesn't. And it's starting to feel like perhaps it never will, like this really is just a dream, as it has seemed all along.

***

Of course, the simple truth of this situation is actually the opposite: the longer baby takes to come, the more likely it is that any given day that follows will be it. After all, no baby stays inside forever; so goes the adage, and so we were told at last week's appointment. If all looks well at tomorrow's appointment and we're advised it's okay to continue waiting, an induction will nonetheless be set for Saturday, ten days past the official due date. (I don't know how negotiable this is; when it was mentioned, it seemed better not to enter into a discussion unless and until it became relevant.)

With all the disclaimers about healthy baby and healthy mother, I absolutely do not want to be induced. My very emotional dream, which I'm strongly attached to, is of a fully natural birth, and while it's better to frame this positively, with Saturday looming, I'm beginning to feel a bit more ... negative. Negative as in I'm afraid of an induction, of being unable to handle the resultantly more frequent and more painful contractions, and of triggering a cascade of interventions that could ultimately lead to surgery and to my birth dream slipping away.

I also don't want to lose what is to us an important and special part of the birth experience – the excitement of waiting, wondering if this is really it, heading to the hospital once it all becomes clear that it is. This too is part of my dream.

I just absolutely do not want to be induced.

***

Veritable natural labor triggers or mere old wives' tales, I've started really trying them. I've been walking a lot. I've been relaxing a lot. I've been self-hypnotizing a lot. I've been doing exercises on the birthing ball. I translated the label on a bag of tea that a German friend gave me a while ago, telling me it was "for the uterus," discovered it was red raspberry leaf, and started chugging it by the teapotful. I ate another curry, gullet-decimating heartburn be damned.

I even went for acupuncture this morning. A week ago it seemed like too much effort, too little certainty for this holder of views on medicine that are more Western than Eastern, but then I ran into my neighbor, who told me that she'd had it done at a day or two post-term and then went into labor the same evening.

And yet ... nothing.

In the meantime, I keep telling myself, This guy is totally going to call. Whether he does it on his own volition or under duress, he will call. He will. He has to.

And however it will happen, in the end, there will be no other outcome than that.

even the cat's trying to scratch this little sucker out.