Baby!

He's here! Our son, who shall be referred to as O on this blog, has emerged into the outside world and everyone is happy and healthy. Photographic evidence appears below:

Pics or it didn't happen!

I really want to write down the birth story (to quote one of my favorite bloggers, it was not too long and not too awful) but with parents and in-laws arriving today, I think that will have to wait for a bit. Turns out having a newborn keeps you pretty busy, who knew? Anyway, thanks to everyone for your support and well wishes, and I'll write more soon!

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!

A Month of Sundays?

First of all, I refer you to this website for updates on my current condition: http://haveyouhadthatbabyyet.com

That's correct, I'm still waiting around for something to happen (something amazing, I guess!) In the meantime, I'm "enjoying" maternity leave as much as a person can enjoy being off work while in a constant state of hyper-awareness about one's body and whether it may, at any moment, send one into spasms of pain/release amniotic fluid from between one's legs. I am convinced that if I'm one of the 15% of women whose labor begins with ruptured membranes, it will start while I'm standing in a check-out line someplace, partially because I feel like I'm spending all of my precious free time in check-out lines. They really do move so much slower during the weekdays. It's crazy.

Besides rolling my eyes in check-out lines (all I need are file folders and pens! I'm not setting up an entire home office like the woman ahead of me! Why does she have to order furniture from the only open cashier? There should be a dedicated furniture-ordering desk so people like me don't have to wait for 20 minutes to buy their file folders and pens!), I'm treating this downtime like I would an idle Sunday afternoon. There are chores to be done around the house that I've neglected for months, and they're really satisfying to get done. I've dropped off pictures to be framed, cleaned the bathroom including the molding, and any moment now I'm going to sit down and write the thank-you notes from my baby shower, I swear. Yesterday I even made this and it was very tasty:

The problem is what will happen when I run out of chores and have to decide between starting a new, honest-to-goodness project and catching up on reruns of "ER" and "Designing Women." My next doctor's appointment isn't until Friday, so I won't know for another two days whether all of this hip pain and general physical discomfort has actually resulted any measurable progress towards labor. Over the weekend I swear the baby dropped even further - my bump looks like it's about to enter a "how low can you go?" limbo contest and I really think I have a baby head crammed into my pelvis since my waddle went from decent to comical - but there's been no more bleeding since last week, no identifiable mucus plug, no regularly-spaced contractions, nothing. So we're still waiting, and making pies. I think today's selection will involve pears...

1 Down, 9 More to Go

Centimeters, that is! Whatever happened on Sunday night, it resulted in my cervix being 1 cm dilated and 50% effaced. You know what that means? It means that things are really happening! My body is getting ready to give birth to a baby. Insane.

Now, my doctor was quick to mention that it doesn't mean I'm about to go into labor. There are women who walk around at 3-4 cm dilated for weeks without making any other progress. However - remember back in February when the Maternal-Fetal Medicine doctor first mentioned induction to me? And then in July, when they changed the plan a bit and said that I could probably go to 40 full weeks and then be induced, as opposed to doing it early? Well, my feelings about inducing labor have been mixed from the very beginning. Inductions apparently work best when your body is beginning to go into labor a little bit already (when your cervix is, ew, "ripe"), and have the highest rate of complications when your cervix is still long and closed and the induction process has to start from scratch. My OB had warned me that if we got to 40 weeks and the baby was still just hanging out in my belly with no indication of busting out anytime soon, he might not want to start an induction because the last thing we want is (and this is a direct quote) "a long, hard labor followed by a c-section." Um, yeah, let's not plan for that.

But! As of yesterday, we know that my cervix is already beginning to change and my body is tentatively getting ready to give birth. I wouldn't necessarily want to induce today, but I'm already in a better position for an induction than I could have been at this stage. And I might go into labor on my own anyway, who knows...

When the Time Comes, You'll Know?

As of Sunday night, we have officially entered a new phase of this pregnancy: LaborWatch 2012! What kicked it off? Well, there I was, cooking dinner and watching Lady and the Tramp on ABC Family (which, FYI, if you are a dog owner expecting your first baby, brings on some major guilt). I went to use the bathroom and, for the third time since getting knocked up nine months ago, saw some blood. It wasn't much - not nearly as much as the bleed I had at 9 weeks or the bleed I had at 21 weeks. It was really just some spotting, and for once I didn't immediately panic. It could have been my mucus plug/bloody show, which is entirely normal to see at 37 weeks. Normal, but perhaps an indication that I was about to go into labor? Yikes! Quick, grab the hospital bag!

In the end, despite some frequent Braxton-Hicks that night, everything stayed quiet and I haven't gone into labor yet. At least, I don't think I have. Who really knows? There's active labor, which by all accounts is hard to miss, and then there's early labor, which apparently can go on for quite some time and be practically indistinguishable from false labor. Near as I can tell, nothing has really started yet, although I have started paying more attention to the timing of my Braxton-Hicks contractions. And so we wait. Here's what my waiting looks like, by the numbers:

Amount of times per day I really, genuinely believe that I'm about to go into labor: 3-4
Amount of times I have actually gone into labor: 0
Amount of times I have talked myself into thinking I'm about to go into labor because I just really don't want to do some chore at work or at home: Many

Number of Braxton-Hicks contractions I have each day: 15-20
Amount of times these Braxton-Hicks contractions have had a distinguishable pattern: 0
Number of "real" contractions I have felt: 0? I think? Who knows! Apparently sometimes they feel the same as a Braxton-Hicks!

Number of birth videos I have watched, or re-watched, in the last few weeks: 10, maybe?
Amount of education I now have about the birthing process: High
Level of comfort I continue to have with the idea that I am shortly going to be asked to push an infant out of my personal region: Exceedingly Low

If anyone needs me, I'll be over here obsessively staring at the clock!