My expected date of delivery (EDD) was on the 27th November 2013 and I was counting down the days. It was Sunday the 24th November, only 3 days left! I was so excited and nervous at the same time. I was nervous because my plan was to have a natural birth with no doctor intervention at all – thus the reason I chose Al-Nisa Maternity Home. My thought process was: for me to give birth naturally I CANNOT be overdue. I refused it. My fear with being overdue was that the baby would be born too big or that my amniotic fluid would be too little or that there would be complications for me to give birth naturally. So our plan was to be as active as I could be, and for a couple months prior to my due date my husband Nazeem bought me a birthing ball that I used to sit on and bounce on, which was supposed to help move the baby down and closer to my cervix. We started going to malls and made sure we walked for hours (the stores helped to distract me from my swollen, tired feet) and on weekends we would go for drives and walked wherever we stopped.
This Sunday was no different. We decided to take a drive to Gordon’s Bay and walked on the beach. It was a beautiful day: the sun was out, the water was nice and cool and the sand felt great under out feet as we walked. Once we were done we drove along the coast and ended up in Hermanus. It was so beautiful. It was a pity we didn’t see any whales (I don’t think it was the season or something like that) but we had lunch and I ended up buying a sunhat on the market.
