Week 40 update (long)

This one will be long so I hope you are prepared to sit and read for a few minutes. I’ve been remiss in updating but you will understand once you read the events of the past week.

Nope, baby is not here yet. Today is the “due date” but he doesn’t seem ready to grace the world with his presence. From here on out, the phone calls (as in my answering them) stop. I will let you know if there is any progress or if he has arrived. Yes, I have had a bad day/week and I’m really tired of answering “Is there any progress? Is the baby here yet?” I will call or post updates here when there is news to be had. We sincerely appreciate all the offers to help but there is not anything that anyone can do at this point. We will let you know when/if help is needed.

Wednesday’s appointment was actually well timed. I had woken up at 3 in the morning not feeling very well, blaming it on dinner the night before at Chuy’s. I had finally moved to the couch at 4 to get some sleep and allow Paul some time to sleep as well. I was having a hard time determining if it was contractions or just gas but knew I felt like I had been run over. Get to the doctor’s office and they knew something was up. My normal, cheery self was nowhere to be found. BP was high (normal) however, I had finally dilated to 1 cm. Progress… My doctor decides to go ahead and hook me up to the fetal monitor just to see what was up. Baby’s heartbeat was up and down (makes them happy to see it speed up and slow down) and I was having contractions 1 to 3 minutes apart. Paul asked if I was feeling all of them and I said that I was not. I was only able to feel every other or third one. After about 20 minutes on the monitor, they send me along my way with a comment from my doctor saying that she expected to see me again later that evening. She was actually on call Wednesday night so it was good timing on all of our parts. She also strongly suggested that I get some sleep and gave me a prescription for some Ambien. I was a little hesitant at first but after having a partial emotional breakdown in the exam room, gave it a second thought and headed to the pharmacy.

After a decent nap Wednesday afternoon, and after having called various family to give them a potential “heads up”, my contractions finally got to the point of being regular enough to be timed. Got all the way to consistent contractions, 5-7 minutes apart, that stopped at midnight. It was like the baby turned into a pumpkin. Twenty-one hours of false labor later, I head off to bed, since it seemed like I was done for the night.

I woke up at 5 am Thursday with a horrible backache, to the point that any little movement with my left leg almost (and sometimes did) bring me to tears. I moved to the couch again thinking that I would be able to find a better position to sleep in. WRONG!!! After hours of fighting it and surviving on Tylenol and a heating pad, I finally gave in and called the doctors office. At that point, my doctor was gone for the day and her nurse had already finished returning calls for the day. I had a chat with the after hours nurse with pretty much the recommendation of 2 Tylenol every 4 hours and alternate hot and cold on my back.

I slept sitting up on the couch in the study Thursday night as that was the only place and position that was comfortable. My staying there also allowed Paul to get a good night’s sleep since I was not in the bed groaning and thrashing about from the pain. He has been very understanding about my level of discomfort at this point and is doing what he can to make me a happier camper. I will admit that I have not been the greatest person to be around the past few weeks and he has been an absolute trooper.

Friday morning, I get a somewhat frantic call from the nurse asking how I was doing and could I come in later that morning. We were off to the doctor’s office again so she could take a look at my back. She seemed genuinely surprised that she did not hear from us Wednesday night (that makes several of us). We come to the conclusion that I was dealing with back spasms probably due to the number of hours I was in false labor on Wednesday. She gave me a prescription for Vicodin to get through the pain and allow me to be more comfortable. One pill makes me sleepy and makes baby hyper, which meant I was trying to take a nap and he was having a party.

She checked to see if I had dilated any more and the answer was no. Her comment was that had I been around 3 cm dilated, she would have seriously considered inducing labor at that point but since I was still at 1, the risk of a c-section was not worth putting me through induction at that point.

That being said, we now have an expiration and/or induction date set. If he doesn’t decide to grace the world with his presence by April 6th, then I get to go to the hospital on April 7th to be induced. We now have a definite end date but I think we are all hoping we don’t get to that point. The joke from the doctor’s office is that if they setup an induction date, that works some voodoo magic and baby decides to come out on their own. Let’s hope this is the case.

My back is still giving me some problems but I don’t think I will be done with the issues I am having until he is out and not being the cause of the strain. Contractions come and go and don’t seem to be very willing to set up any kind of pattern for longer than an hour or two. I did get a massage yesterday (Saturday) and that seemed to relieve a lot of the pain I was feeling in my hips and lower back. I may need to repeat that in a few days if little one has not arrived yet

My next appointment is set for Friday and we are also set up for what they call a biophysical profile which will include an ultrasound to make sure all is going well in his little world. I would take great pleasure in being able to cancel that one.