Congratulations! You're 40 weeks pregnant and you've reached the
end of your pregnancy (and more than likely, the end of your
rope). But just because your due date is marked with pen on your
practitioner's chart (and with red marker on your calendar)
doesn't mean that Mother Nature's gotten the memo. About half of
all pregnancies last longer than 40 weeks, and it's anyone's
guess when yours might end (though your practitioner will
probably not let it go longer than 42 weeks, thankfully). By now
you've no doubt lost a night or two's sleep over when and where
your water (your amniotic sac) will break — because you've heard
(or seen on TV) one or two horror stories about a pregnant
woman's water breaking in an inconvenient (no, make that
humiliating) time and place (like in the middle of a busy
sidewalk at lunch hour, or at a jam-packed mall on a Saturday
morning). But your reality show will probably be a little
different. First, because fewer than 15 percent of women
experience a rupture of the membranes before