How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Induction

So - we're there. Despite a few positive signs that my body is considering going into labor on its own, the time for my induction is almost at hand. Not that long ago I would have fought an induction tooth and nail because I wanted to do everything as naturally as possible, but that has changed, because of one giant reason:

By inducing labor in the hospital, I get to have the same pain relief options as a woman who isn't on heparin - up to and including an epidural.

For the past nine months, I've been worrying about being in agony during labor while doctors and nurses deny me pain relief. I think I would have always been worried about this, but after my experience with my egg retrieval during IVF, it became an obsession. The idea that I might be told (for very good reasons!) "no, we can't give you an epidural right now" was bringing back all of the panic, anxiety, and anger from back in January. There are plenty of things that can still go wrong with an induction, but complications from an ill-timed heparin shot at home won't be one of them. I get to concentrate on meeting my baby instead of worrying about his birth, and that is a gift that has absolutely no price tag.

Catch you on the flip side!

I Guess the 37th Week is the Cupcake Week

Oh, memories. This week I started the official paperwork for my maternity leave. I get no cell service at my desk, so I had to step out of the building for a few minutes to call our HR system to kick off the process, and as I sat down on the bench in the patio I realized that it was almost a year to the day to when this whole mess started. Last October, I was calling HR to work out how many consecutive days off I could take after my surgery to remove the endometriomas on my ovaries, and I had forgotten that when you call the first thing you hear is the automated message: "If you are calling regarding a pregnancy claim, press 1. For all other claims, press 2." It was tough to hear that last year, knowing that I might never get pregnant. This year, even with my unborn child doing his best to tap out messages in Morse code from inside my uterus, it was still bittersweet.

What else is new? Well, my hips have started hurting in a way that simply cannot be ignored (and, like Shakira, my hips don't lie.) It's probably that the ligaments are starting to relax in preparation for, gulp, delivery. I've also switched over from once-daily Lovenox injections to twice-daily injections of unfractionated Heparin. They are incredibly uneventful, especially since I've had so many months to refine my technique (don't pinch the skin too hard as you inject!) and the bruises have been kept to a minimum. It is kind of daunting to inject, look at the clock, and think "well, if I go into labor right now, how many hours before I can get an epidural?" Oh! And last week's ultrasound confirmed that the little one is indeed vertex, or head-down, so there's nothing to worry about there. No transverse presentation here.

Also, this happened:

:-)