June Baby

First of all, I can't believe we're having a June baby. For some reason it never even occured to me that would happen! My little brother Kevin has been predicting she'll be born on my birthday, but since that's the 1oth, that was highly unlikely. I still didn't think that she might be born less than a week before my birthday! Crazy. What a great birthday present though, right?

I decided this weekend that Friday was my last day at work. There wasn't much for me to work on since I had to give all of my work away and couldn't really pick anything up, not knowing if I would be there to finish it in an hour's time since I was so far overdue. It was finally starting to get a little bit uncomfortable to sit at my desk all day too, although I'm still amazed at how long it took me to get to that point! Plus I was thinking I needed to change things up a bit. Obviously working was not getting me anywhere, maybe I needed to try staying home. I am glad that I stuck around as long as I did though. I can only take up to 12 weeks off (before and after the baby) under the FMLA Act. If I had gone out May 14th as planned, I'd have already used up almost 3 weeks of leave before the baby even got here! I would have been FREAKING out. I figured starting my leave today would be safe, I really can't go much past a week at this point.

So last week at our appointment with Jo, she asked us when we thought we'd like to talk about inducing. We told her it made us really nervous. Sometimes inducing doesn't work, and it puts the baby (and the mom) under a lot of stress, increasing the need for an emergency c-section, or worse, resulting in serious complications for the baby if too much of the drug is administered. Plus, we were worried that there might be a good reason she's not coming out yet, maybe she needs more time to develop, maybe she's just not ready yet. But on the other hand, we didn't want her to get so big that we'd need a c-section anyway or risk complications from a placenta that's too old. Over the weekend I did a lot of reading up on it, looking at stories from people who had induced. There were a few horror stories out there, but most of them had pretty positive things to say about their experience. There were also a lot more pros versus cons for inducing. I had been leaning more towards being okay with it, but Paul was still pretty worried.

Today we had our appointment with Jackie. I told her that I thought I might have been leaking some amniotic fluid that morning, so she checked that for me. She didn't think that my water was fully broken, but there was a little bit of leaking. She told us to go for our scheduled ultrasound and non-stress test and then meet with Jo (who was on call at the hospital) to talk about possibly inducing tonight or tomorrow morning. She said that if my amniotic fluid level was a lot lower, it would be safest. She also told us that my cervix is really ready to go at any time (I'm 3 cm dilated now and still about 80% effaced), so inducing with Pitocin will probably work really well for me. She said that most of the time complications come from needing to also ripen the cervix, which they'll most likely be able to skip altogether for me. I'll probably only need a little bit of the drug to get me started. So that made us feel much better about it. I looked over at Paul when she said tonight or tomorrow and I don't think I have ever seen him so excited, it was really funny. He felt better after what Jackie told us, and he couldn't believe that we might be meeting our baby in the next day or so. He was all nervous energy, just kept saying how he couldn't believe it was really happening. We went for our regular post-appointment McDonald's stop (I know, it's bad, but it's our little treat for being so far overdue darn it!) and then to pick up some pills for Gus. He has a rash under his armpits and has been so uncomfortable all weekend! Poor guy. I wanted to make sure we get him on the medicine before we left him with my sister. (Hear that Kag? More pills to give Gussy!) We headed out to the hospital after that.

Everything looked good in the ultrasound and the non-stress test. My fluid level was only a bit lower, and she is still moving around, getting plenty of oxygen. Jo came in to see us as we were finishing up the non-stress test. She gave us big hugs and told us that she knew we were nervous about inducing, and that they would completely support us if we wanted to wait it out until the end of the week. But she also wanted us to know that after 2 weeks post-due date chances for complications goes from 3 to 6%. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it makes them nervous because any time there are increased chances, someday they're going to see it happen. She said the same thing Jackie did about my cervix being ready enough to skip the ripening process, and that they will continuously monitor us to make sure there is no stress on the baby or myself while they're administering the drug. She even thinks I should be able to use the portable monitors so I can stay pretty mobile throughout the labor if I want to. Ultimately she left it up to us. I told her that we were feeling much better about inducing and that we'd like to give it a try. So she told us to go home tonight, get a good night's sleep, and call tomorrow morning at 6 to see if they can get us a labor room by 7am. She said we might need to check back if there are a lot of more urgent cases than mine, but we should be able to get in there sometime tomorrow.

So it looks like we might finally be meeting our baby sometime tomorrow or the next day! I am super excited, not nervous at all. I just want to get this show on the road! Paul is nervous that he's not going to be any good at helping me, but I know he's going to do great. He's been reading that childbirth manual for weeks now, he's more prepared than he thinks. He sure can't wait to meet his baby--the ultrasound technician was mostly checking for fluid today, but she did get us a shot of Annie with her fist in front of her face, giving us the thumbs up sign. He couldn't stop looking at it after we left. I think Annie was giving him a pep talk!

Hopefully my next post will be an announcement!