The morning of Maisie's official due date I had my 40 week appointment. I was feeling optimistic and positive and, Jeanetta, the midwife I met with, told me more than once how great I looked (she knows what a 40 week pregnant gal wants to hear). When I set up another appointment for the following Monday (6 days later) I consoled myself with thoughts that the baby would be here before that day arrived. I stayed positive up until Sunday night, when that 41 week visit became imminent and Dinah had just had a huge breakdown at church that made my patient resolve seem all the more difficult to maintain. This pregnancy had been harder on her than it had been on me.
So I put on my happy face and went to my 41 week appointment on Monday morning (August 15th). I met with another midwife, Trinette, who I hadn't seen in quite some time but who would be backup to Jeanetta during the week if Jeanetta was attending another birth when I went into labor. So it was good to get to know Trinette a bit more. I had some questions for her about induction since the birthing center didn't use Pitocin except in cases of serious bleeding after birth to get the uterus to contract. Therefore, if a woman needed to be induced and other methods weren't working, she'd be transferred to the hospital for Pitocin induction. (This complicated things since we'd already paid outright for a birth center birth and would have a separate bill to pay if the baby was born at the hospital. Not to mention a hospital birth wasn't what we'd wanted.) Trinette told me that the common method of induction they used was membrane stripping and a thing called a foley catheter, which I'd not heard of before but was willing to try. She also had me do a non-stress test which monitors the response of baby's heart rate to it's movement (when baby moves the heart rate should go up slightly if all is well). The results were good. We decided to set up an appointment to try induction on Thursday morning if the baby didn't come by then.
Later that evening I was having second thoughts about induction so soon but needed some reassurance. I googled: '42 weeks pregnant' and found some encouraging articles about waiting for your baby to come when she's ready and the lack of necessity to induce before 42 weeks if there is no medical reason to do so. I knew I had no medical reason and I'd just been reassured that baby was indeed doing fine. So ultimately I decided I would keep my Thursday appointment and take another non-stress test if they wanted to but not try induction until the following week. I also read that only 2-3% of women make it past 42 weeks without going into labor, so my odds of not needing induction at all were pretty good.
The week before I'd told Ben that if we didn't have a baby by that weekend I wanted to get a prenatal massage; partly because I had heard other women say nothing but good things about them and also as a means to try to stimulate labor. I called and made an appointment for Wednesday.
Tuesday evening we had to drive up to SLC to sign the papers to close on our Herriman house (we sold it). It was a huge relief to have it done and over with since Ben said the baby was waiting for our house sale to be finalized before she came. Tuesday night I decided to go for a swim at our neighborhood pool and left Ben home with Dinah. It was late and I was the only one there. It felt so wonderful to be in the water; totally weightless. I've always loved water. I felt a great sense of peace about the birth and waiting for the baby to come when she was ready. I thought "this is the cure for the late baby blues: treating yourself to things you love; savoring the good things in life".
After the swim I took a hot bath and then my dad and Ben gave me a blessing. I finally felt truly calm and knew I was ready to have this baby whenever she decided to join us.
0 notes:
Post a Comment