Happy Birthday, Sweet Baby Maeve!

My baby is one today. She was born by c-section at 9:40pm after a 15 hour trial of labor for VBAC.





This past year has gone really fast - but in a wonderful way.






She is a bright little ray of sunshine, very happy and calm.





Happy birthday, sweet girl. May the year ahead bring you joy.

All Systems Go

My doctor was back today, and I was happy to see her.

She's concerned about my blood pressure and about the GD. She still wants to give me an honest shot at a vaginal delivery, however. She gave me the choice of an induction or scheduling the repeat c-section.

My cervix is 90% effaced and 2 cm dialated, so I'm favorable for induction. They won't use drugs on a VBAC mama, so at 3 am Wednesday morning, I'm going in to have my water broken. She swept my membranes today and she thinks I have a good chance of going into labor before then anyway.

I know a lot of hardcore VBAC people aren't going to agree with this. They'd be telling me to push for biophysical profile ultrasounds, etc. However, I trust my doctor. She has been completely upfront with me from the beginning about my chances, the risks, the benefits of VBAC. If it wasn't for the GD, she said she'd be happy letting me go to 42 weeks and probably a little longer. I can accept that. She could refuse to induce me at all, but she left the descision up to me (and said she'd prefer I do the induction b/c she'd much rather attend a vaginal delivery than a c-section).

So that's the news here - I get 36-48 hours to go into active labor from the time they rupture me. I have no idea if I get to stay in the hospital that entire time or not. I'll keep the blog updated, since I'll have the laptop.

Never mind, then.

My mom came to get Freyja and I decided to take a little nap while I still could.

Yep, the second I laid down everything stopped except the pelvic pressure. I don't get it, b/c I was up and moving around, cooking, doing laundry, getting a few last things together and they didn't stop then, did they?

I am really frustrated right now, going on two weeks of prodromal labor with nothing to show for it. I hope that my cervix is at least changing.

Taking It Easy

Due to my high blood pressure, midwife wants me to "take it easy" until my next appointment, which is Monday with the OB who is overseeing my VBAC.

Easier than usual? To be honest, my hips and pelvis hurt so much that between fetching meals and snacks for Freyja and myself, going to the bathroom, and occasionally unloading the dishwasher or switching laundry loads, my butt stays in the recliner. Then every evening I do some of the spinningbabies.com postures to attempt to make up for the time in the recliner. From what I can tell, the baby is happily right occiput anterior, so I must be doing something correctly. Left occiput anterior is the end-all-be-all of optimal fetal presentation, but I'll take what I can get.

I'm not sure how much "easier" I can take it without becoming comatose. My blood pressure remains high, but I have zero other symptoms of pre-eclampsia. I'm still wearing my rings and I still have ankles. I am not at all puffy (erm...puffier than usual). In theory, we are still "only" talking pregnancy-induced hypertension (because my blood pressure is shockingly normal when I'm not incubating another human life).

I'm supposed to lie on my left side a lot. I have a stupid uncomfortable couch and a three year old who requires constant supervision just due to her age. She is good about playing independently, which is nice for me - but I can't just hole up in my bedroom while she has run of the rest of the house. Let me tell you that this is probably not going to happen much. Comfortably ensconced in the recliner is the best I can hope for. I might be able to swing 15 min out of an hour on my left side on the couch. Any longer and I'd fall asleep. Not a good thing.

Off to meditate before sleep and see if that helps the blood pressure any.

One calendar month til my due date.

Tuna Salad

I had a tuna sub for dinner last night and at least two tuna sandwiches for lunch earlier in the week.
It is just about the only protein source that seems at all appealing right now. I can taste it just thinking about it. Turkey smells bad to me right now, roast beef tastes like sawdust, ham is too watery and I've eaten so much freaking peanut butter this pregnancy that just looking at a jar of it makes me groan. I hate eggs, so I don't have any recourse there.

Unfortunately "they" want preggos to limit tuna to 1-2 servings a week and I've gone over that already.

I'm also craving chips and onion dip, but genius hubby only bought flavored chips. You can't dip those, not in onion dip. I may have to get dressed and run to the store.

VBAC Consult

I was very pleasantly surprised. My assigned OB is a 4th year resident. She reminds me a lot of one of the docs I used to "work" with at the clinic where I did my AmeriCorps service.

She was very up front about what exactly I can expect, answered all of my questions without waffling or "maybe" or "we'll see". She said "This will happen, this will happen, this will happen, but beyond that, it's all up to you." So, I signed the consent forms and we're now officially planning a VBAC. The hospital seems to be very progressive as far as natural birth goes. None of the residents being trained do routine episiotomies, my OB at least will catch in any position I want to be in, and I was encouraged to use things like a birth ball, the shower and the tub. Excellent!

They don't use any ripening agents for VBAC's (very good) and will only use pitocin if a pressure catheter shows that contractions just aren't doing the work they should. Those are both very good things.

The only sucky part is that my blood pressure was REALLY high while we were there. They checked it twice. She ordered some blood work and I have to keep my pee for 24 hours to check for protein spilling in it. I am going to puke soooo much, just thinking about that makes me nauseous. Better safe than sorry, though.

Slacker!

Totally.

There just hasn't been much going on here to blog about. Life goes on. I have my VBAC consultation on Monday, which I hope goes well. I have a very long list of questions to ask the OB. I hope I don't scare him. I've done my research.

I am getting another ultrasound. It seems that idiot midwife missed the part that said "FOLLOW UP RECOMMENDED" on the report. Marvelous midwife did notice it, however - but only after I asked about the gender and then cried. I didn't intend to cry, but hormones got in the way.

So, that will be on February 4th - a week from Monday. Hopefully baby will cooperate and we'll get the money shot.

Freyja has gone from "If it's a boy, I am running away to live at Grandma's" to "NO, I don't want a GIRL baby, I only like BOY babies."

Gut feeling still says boy. Gut feeling was accurate for Freyja, so we'll see how well mother's intuition plays out this time. Frankly, I hope it's a boy because we decided on a boy name already. Girls names are still up in the air - we have three we both love, and we would probably have to have the baby first and see what name fits her the best.

Blog Day for the Mothers' Act

http://www.postpartum.net/take-action.html

800,000 women in the United States will develop a diagnosable perinatal mood disorder this year. Only 15% of them will get any kind of treatment.

If you consider a population of 300 million, that's too many. As a nation, we treat our mothers appallingly. After all, a healthy baby is all that counts, right? It doesn't matter that a mother's body and rights were trampled on to get that healthy baby, does it? Even other mothers turn on each other over how we birth, feed, and care for our babies.

The Mothers' Act is a good start. It provides grants for education about postpartum depression. However, nothing will change until the social stigma of being affected by depression is eradicated.

The stories and voices of perinatal mood disorders are varied. They extend across social, economic, and racial boundaries. It's not just poor women, or white women, or rich women, or black women, or Hispanic women or middle-class women. It's all women.

In a nation that has the most advanced medical technology and the best doctors on the planet, we shame women who need help. "Cheer up!" "Buck up!" "You have a healthy baby, that's all that matters!"

We should be ashamed of ourselves. It's not all that matters.

Can I get a VBAC?

Who knows? There are at least 30 obstetrics practices in the area where we live. I am going to start calling them in a few minutes.

Let's hope I find someone with a good attitude, because I'm not going to listen to some jackass OB who thinks he's God's Gift to medicine tell me I'm too fat to have a vaginal delivery. But, if that's going to be the case, I'd like to find out now so I can just stick with my midwives that I see for well-woman care, and have their overseeing OB do a repeat c-section (he did Freyja's, which was the only thing well-done about her fiasco of a birth).

We've been tossing around the idea of a home birth, but there is just no way we'd be able to afford the midwife's fees, and as much as I know I might like a home birth, the idea of uterine rupture at home where I'm 20 minutes from a hospital and general anesthesia scares the shit out of me. After seeing uterine rupture AT a hospital, I'm not quite sure I can cope with that happening at home. VBAC'ing in the hospital I can handle, even though I know it will most likely be sterile, I'll be on my back, everything draped, bright lights and cold in an OR "just in case".

The statistics are on my side, it's just finding a provider that will "allow" me to "attempt a trial of labor". As soon as the phone finishes charging, I'll start calling and finding out.