One fortnight until due date.....

Which means that I could be in labor in fifteen minutes or as long as four weeks from now. Even four weeks doesn't sound like enough time. I'm starting to feel the doubt of whether I'm really going to be able to do this, although there are many people with less common sense than I have who have raised reasonably healthy, happy, and well-functioning kids.

Work has been strange lately. I have been superwoman the past several months, determined to prove that pregnant women aren't useless professionally. Now, I'm starting to have to copy colleagues on all of my correspondence just in case they have to take over something I'm working on at a moment's notice. I can't be relied upon to do anything for the next two weeks, and I feel very uncomfortable in that situation. I know men have to deal with this uncertainty too when their partners are about to give birth, but for some reason I feel like it reflects more poorly on me. I might be projecting a bit, although there has to be SOME reason for the pay gap between men and women (not that I think there is a pay gap at my job - but it has been shown routinely in the economy in general). I'm pretty sure that women having to walk around pregnant in front of everybody explains quite a bit of that variance.

My husband proposed a few years ago that there won't be true gender equality until we figure out external gestation. I tend to agree. No matter how strong and useful I want to be, some evolutionary whisper is telling me not to lift the spare tire out of the trunk and not to stand on top of a ladder to change the HVAC filters. And it's hard to think of myself as equal to anyone if I have to rely on them for help, even temporarily.