Three Makes Five

Saturday, October 29, 2005

41 weeks 2 days--Out, out damned snot.

OK, so it's not technically snot. But I am losing my mucous plug in large pieces. Which is heartening. It means I'm dialating. Which, of course, doesn't really mean a damned thing, but I am going to hope it means the baby will come soon.

Contractions are continuing to happen sporadically. Wake me up sometimes. I read something in the Midwife Archives about the theory that an open mouth makes for an open cervix. Not too sure I believe that, but consciously relaxing my mouth has indeed helped to get the rest of my body to relax. I can't exactly hop up out of bed to squat & rock every time I have a contraction.

Oh, I'm having bad back labor too. I've always had back problems. This is like my worst backache piling on top of itself repeatedly. God, it hurts. All the contractions hurt, but this back pain (which never really goes away between contractions, only dulls a bit) is a special sort of hell.

And the thing is, I could end this tomorrow if I wanted. Walk into Kapiolani and say "Hey, I've had two c-sections, gimme a third" and then give birth in a most painless fashion.

But I'm not gonna.

Oy, I'm insane.

Pool...Pool...I love my pool. It really doesn't stop the pain of contractions, or even seem to ease them in the slightest, but it sure makes me more comfortable in between them. Spent some more time in it today. Not laboring, just trying to ease my back. Heavenly. I took the advice of an online acquaintance & made myself a drink. I had about 45 minutes of near-painlessness, except for the contractions of course. And there were only two or three of those.

I think I said in my last entry that I had Rob check my cervix (he looked!) & he said it was maybe a centimeter dialated. I checked it last night and since I could actually find it and tell it was dialated, it has obviously changed some between Tuesday & Thursday. So I've got some change going on, however slowly. That was a big fear of mine. When I was induced with Bobbie, I stayed stubbornly at the 2cm I came in at, & had been at for more than a month. And of course I never got the opportunity to labor/dialate with Linda. So I'll take the movement, however slight.

Tried belly binding tonight. Folded a twin-sized sheet, pulled up my tummy, & had Rob tie it around me. Only problem being, by the time we got it tight enough that it actually held my stomach up, it was so tight I could barely breathe and it made my back return to screaming in pain. Nice theory. I'm certain it even works for some women. It did not work for me.

Took more belly shots tonight, since I've hopes this will be about my last opportunity:

Compare that to the one back at 34 or 35 weeks. There's more of a difference than just extra hair on my legs. My tummy is broader, for one. It doesn't look like it sticks out as far, but the truth is I just can't bring my feet in as much as I could seven weeks ago. Geez, I wonder why, LOL.

OK, this next deserves a side-by-side comparison:


Impressive, eh? That first one is 34 weeks, 2 days. The second, 41 weeks, 2 days. Not a huge difference, but an appreciable one. If I knew where my tape measure was, I'd measure myself again, just to see what it says.

Weighed myself on Monday & it said 213. So I've gained about thirty-three pounds. Wow. That's a lot. Not that it bothers me--much. I guess by the time you hit a week overdue, it the whole "ideal weight gain" thing flies out the window anyway.

God, I gotta e-mail these pictures to Mark. He'll get a kick out of them, I think.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

41 weeks--OK, this is getting ridiculous

Day before yesterday, I woke up with contractions. Decided to time them. Two minutes apart. Called Rob at work. He came home. We ran around and did a few last-minute things. Around noon-ish, the contractions started to peter out. So I mixed a little castor oil into a milkshake with the idea of preventing them from stopping, and went and took a nap. Woke up with more contractions. Not so close together, but still pretty regular. Eventually got the pool filled up and went outside to relax in it.

And then...

Nothing. Nada. Kept having contractions, but they got farther & farther apart. Tried to sleep and couldn't--they were still coming often enough to ensure that. I could tell they weren't doing anything. Don't ask me how, but I could. God knows they felt real enough. Well, they *were* real, just not real helpful. Not enough to do anything. But I kept thinking that sooner or later they'd flip over into the real thing. Got permission for Rob to stay home from work. Endured another day of occasional contractions. Still no baby. This is getting insane.

Some time during the first day, we made the mistake of calling our mothers. My mom just keeps calling to see how things are going. His mother--well, there's a reason we didn't mention the term 'homebirth' to her prior to this. She called yesterday to see how it was going, or he called her, and he said that the labor had just petered out, it was apparently false labor but we'd thought it was the real thing because the contractions were two minutes apart.

So she's flipped out because the contractions were close together and now they're not. For some reason in her mind this means an emergency and that we MUST GO TO THE HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW BECAUSE ONLY THE HOSPITAL CAN DEAL WITH THIS. Um, yeah. I've dealt with hospitals. I know that "I was having contractions but now they've stopped," brings the response of "OK, we'll check you out and monitor you...OK, nothing's going on, go on home and come back when the contractions are regular again." Start-and-stop prodromal labor is frustrating as hell, but it is not unusual and it is not an emergency.

So we're not answering the phone anymore. Not when it's them, anyway.

And now, I will whine...

I hurt. All these contractions hurt. Linda, of course, is still nursing. I should get some sort of medal for nursing during any sort of labor, even prodromal. Because of course nipple stimulation helps to bring on contractions, which hurt like hell. This is seriously impeding my ability to nurse her to sleep, however. Something about Mommy occasionally tensing up and starting to whimper in pain isn't very soothing. Geez, can't imagine why.

I do have hopes the baby will decide to come within the next few days. Hopefully by this weekend. He's still moving around plenty, so I'm not worried at all on that account. I'm just getting more & more impatient as I go.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

0 days 23 hours 12 minutes 19 seconds left...

So says my handy-dandy little count down ticker in the corner of my screen. Mozilla Firefox, how I love thee and thy plug-ins.

Really thought I was going to have this kid on Sunday. Was awoken with contractions, which continued the next five or so hours, and then stopped. Just. Stopped.

Further musings from last week's ultrasound...Tech said baby is estimated 7lbs 2oz, but I'm not clear if that was a birthweight estimate or not. Of course, such things are notoriously inaccurate, but it was still interesting to hear. I am also measuring a bit behind, in theory. The LMP due date they gave me at the hospital was 13th October (a 28-day cycle instead of my real 32-day one), so was 39w 3d. Measurements put me at 37w 2d. Which of course doesn't mean a thing either.

All the pieces of the baby are also present & accounted for. Fluid was mildly decreased by the sonographer's measurement--7 where 8 is the minimum of normal. Initial ultrasound done by doctor indicated 9. Of course, slight olgiohydramnios is to be expected at the tail end of pregnancy.

I'm past ready for the baby to be here! Fed it more raw cauliflower and pickles today, as well as a nice rare sirloin and some artichoke hearts. Well, much more than that, but everything save the pickles was dinner.

No almonds, though. I seriously wanted some smoked almonds, and we went to the miniNex in search of them, but none were to be found. So I got a brownie instead. I am still not certain why that was an acceptable substitute...

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

38 w 6 d--Hello there.

Let me see if I can make this clear.

Stay the fuck out of my business.

Clear enough? My body, my baby, my birth. That means I have a say in it. That means my husband has a say in it. That means that no one who once talked to me on a message board has a say in it, however nice you may be. It certainly means that no one has any business encouraging others who are still on said message board to quiz me about my birth choices. I have made them as public as I intend to through this blog and through my discussions on MamaDrama & MotheringDotCommune. I have neither the interest nor the energy to deal with the close-mindedness I know I will find on MomsWhoThink. I'm not going to play this game.

We went to the zoo Sunday. I fell. I went to the hospital and got monitored. I'm no fan of medical intervention, but I'm smart enough to use it when warranted. That is why I underwent six hours of near-continuous fetal monitoring after thinking I might have hit my stomach on the ground when I fell. That is why I let them do an internal exam and run all the blood tests that they pleased, why I put up with the first two ultrasounds of an otherwise undisturbed pregnancy.

And by and large the experience reinforced my decisions. I'm too dumb to take care of myself, of course. Funny, then, that I knew exactly how the baby was laying, exactly where my placenta was--data that were confirmed via ultrasound. Funny how both my baby and I are robustly healthy.

In other news...this long-drawn-out labor shit is getting old. I've been having contractions off & on since Saturday night. I had hoped the long walk around the zoo would kick it into gear. No such luck. I was having a butt-ton of contractions whilst being monitored, but I wasn't feeling 90% of them. Going by the ones I can feel, I'm only having one or two an hour. Enough to make me hope something's going to happen soon, but not enough to be making progress, it seems.

All of this makes me wonder how early Bobbie really was. I more or less assigned myself the 28 Feb due date, because it's the only one that really fit in with when I had sex. The first ultrasound I had assigned me a due date of 10th March. Which means she may well have been 9 days early instead of one day past due. I have to wonder what my labor would have been like with her, had my body been allowed to go into labor on its own. And would she have turned head down eventually?

This baby has been confirmed as head down via ultrasound, by the way. Which, as I said, I knew. I wonder if tension, if dread of the hospital, could have prevented the previous two from turning. Or was it a mere matter of neither of the previous two having enough time? Or was it the affirmations? Asking my baby to be head down? Bribing it with the promise of raw cauliflower and pickles?

Speaking of which, I must get more raw cauliflower & pickles...

Monday, October 03, 2005

37w 4d--Still here. Dammit.

I actually look pregnant these days. Very, very pregnant. Linda was already two weeks old by this time. Frustrating. Damn Them for being right about each pregnancy being different.

If I'm pregnant for too much longer, either my head will explode or I will kill my husband. Or both.

I can't sleep. I can't get comfortable. And then when I do finally fall asleep, I can't stay asleep. I get maybe 2 - 3 hours of sleep at a time, and I wake up in pain. Usually my right hip, from sleeping on it all the time. I'd like to lay on my left side, but that tends to make my stomach hurt.

And then my ass has decided to hurt. My right buttcheek, anyway. Badly. Maybe the sciatica I keep hearing about. Feels like someone's stabbing me in the ass, at any rate, and sometimes when I try to walk it zaps down my leg and makes me have to stop short to be sure I don't fall flat on my face and drop whatever I'm holding.

About the only blessing is that the heartburn comes and goes. Which is a good thing, since no amount of antacids makes it go away. Occasionally I get bad sulphur burps that last all day. Miserable. This is why women schedule inductions before their due dates.

I'm taking some herbs said to help you in the last trimester. I'm back with the red raspberry leaf tea. The latest incarnation of that is to boil a bit less than a quart of water, pour it over three teabags, let it steep about 10 minutes, spike it with 5 drops of blue cohosh tincture (tried taking it under the tongue as suggested, but that shit's made with grain alcohol and burns like a mofo!), and use it to wash down my black cohosh tablet. A sort of all-in-one thing. Bedtime brings two evening primrose oil capsules inserted vaginally. So I ought to have one hell of a ripe cervix & toned uterus by the time all of this is over. I'm thinking I'll add in oral EPO tonight. I've considered nipple stim, but Linda takes care of that nicely with her nursing. Can't get comfortable enough to masturbate for the help an orgasm is said to be, and can't get my husband to have sex with me either. Bastard.