39 weeks and 4 days

Up at 4am again.  It was a nice change, though, because usually I'm up with a horrible anxiety attack or the frightening remnants of a nightmare swirling around me (I don't sleep well when I'm pregnant, can you tell?) and this time it was just a dream and heartburn.

I dreamed I was at the cottage, and I was there with a girl I knew from elementary school, another girl who may have been my daughter but it fluctuated through the dream, and two toddlers.  And it seemed to focus on a desperate race to get to the hospital because someone had eaten shellfish and didn't have their epipen.  I spent the whole dream packing the car and racing around on the phone with 911 dispatchers.  When I woke up, the adrenaline was pumping so fast I knew, without a doubt, that we were up now for a while.

A real Nor'Easter is banging around outside; we're supposed to get 100mm of rain, or so the weather man tells us.  And in local news, the cat has shredded part of a box of kleenex left out on the dryer overnight.

Ok, now, induction methods:

The pineapple is still getting eaten.  Hey, it's harder to eat an entire pineapple in one sitting than you'd think.  I'm not entirely certain what's in the pineapple that's supposed to help, and so I washed the skin thoroughly and them simmered it in a simple syrup to pour over the fruit bits as well, to get any extra chemical compounds that may lurk in there.  Verdict: doesn't seem to be doing much.

Found this website.  It seems like they don't put a lot of trust in the pineapple method.  Not surprising.  I'm noticing a trend in natural induction methods, though; they seem to fall into a few clearly defined categories.  Firstly, you've got your diarrhea-starters, the theory being that if it starts intestinal spasms it may start uterine ones, too.  Next, you've got your cervix-changers, with the idea being that if you can just get to some magic position/number/softness then contractions will start on their own.  Finally, you've got the contraction-focusers, these try and get contractions started and hope that the rest follows along.

I've been nursing since day one, and it hasn't done anything at all to start labour, or even give me a cramp.  So today's attempt is going to involve breaking out the breast pump and giving this a more concerted effort.  I've read that one hour is the time you should aim for, so that's what I'll do.