Postcards from the Mothership

I wish the last three weeks of this pregnancy could have been as blissfully content as the last four days or so have been. Starting with a quiet day to myself on Thursday, each of the last couple of days – even including the snowstorm – have been such a nice contrast to the constant low-level tension I’d been feeling in the back-and-forth, hurry-up-and-wait anxiety of the days since I finished work. I honestly can’t remember the last time I felt so calm, so centred and so content. Calm before the storm? Probably, but I’ll take it!!

Yesterday, the midwife did the “stretch and sweep” and I went from 2 cm to just over 3 cm dilated, which is great. With Simon, it took about 12 hours of medical intervention at the hospital to get that far, so I’m quite pleased. Still no regular or significant contractions, but tonnes of pressure. Today, tomorrow, Tuesday — it’s all good!

The midwives would really prefer that I go into labour on my own, rather than waiting for the induction on Tuesday. I think they’re more anxious than I am at this point! They suggested I try one last level of ‘natural’ induction before Tuesday, so after my appointment yesterday I headed out to the homeopathic chemist to get some Blue Cohosh or Caulophyllum. I waited until this morning to try it (I take a couple of tiny tablets every hour for three or four hours, and if nothing happens by then, it won’t work) and so far I’ve had some more mild contractions but nothing notable.

By now, I’m a walking encyclopedia of induction techniques! Here’s what I’ve tried:

• sex (fun, but awkward while gestating an elephant calf)
• spicy food (not much of a stretch for me – they make up a regular part of my diet. I also tried Chinese food for lunch one day last week. Nothing!)
• driving down a bumpy road (this one was not intentional, but Riverside Drive – the road I take to get to my midwife appointments – is a mess of frost-heaved pavement and potholes, thus quite the bumpy ride!)
• exercise (I spent more time in the gym last week than I did in the past six weeks. Funny how I could do 25 minutes on th elliptical trainer, but not walk for 10 minutes.)
• red raspberry leaf tea (I gave up on this mid-week last week.)
• evening primrose oil (swallow one capsule at bedtime and take the other as a pessary)
• nipple stimulation (very effective for bringing on immediate contractions, but ultimately ineffective unless your body is really ready to give birth. That’s what happened to me last Thursday with the all-night contractions.)
• accupressure on a point in the webbing between thumb and index finger, and just above the ankle (same as nipple stimulation – effective to bring on immediate mild contractions that stop pretty much as soon as the pressure stops.)
• having the midwife strip my membranes (uncomfortable, and marginally useful in increasing dilation. Left me with an achy kind of cramp for most of the day, and only sporadic contractions.)

The midwife also asked me how I felt about castor oil (no thanks) and accupuncture (too cheap to spend the $50+ on something that I’m not sure would work, and am relatively sure would be unpleasant!), so those are the only suggestions that I haven’t tried so far.

By this point I’ve had 12 continuous hours of false labour (10 days ago), lost my mucous plug (five days ago), and had a huge burst of nesting energy (three days ago).

The final analysis? You can neither predict nor induce labour on your own. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING will encourage a baby out of a comfy uterus before he is ready to move. And given the fact that I’m now three for three on overdue babies, I must have one hell of a comfy uterus!

Hey, that’s not right! The counter on my baby countdown ticker went to zero yesterday and is now going in reverse, showing one day to go. No no no, I EARNED that “due date plus one” designation. What do you think of these tickers instead?

(Cutesy overload, I know. Good thing I’m not having glucose issues with this pregnancy.)

Regardless, I’m quite grateful to the Player to be Named Later for holding off yesterday. Aside from Simon’s birthday, we received about 30 cm (12 inches) of snow, and I don’t think the commute across town to the hospital would have been pleasant. It’s clear and blue this morning, and looks to stay that way for the next couple of days.

My darling midwife called yesterday and asked if I could come in for an off-hours appointment today. She’ll likely do a “stretch and sweep”, where she’ll stimulate the production of prostaglandins by separating the bottom of the amniotic sac from the wall of my uterus — hopefully, inducing labour. She also suggested a castor oil cocktail, but I just can’t bring myself to go that far. Feel free to violate my nether regions, but don’t make me poop this baby out. Even I have my limits!

And, here’s the really exciting news: my official hospital inducement has been scheduled for Tuesday, February 5. It is, of course, subject to operational capabilities of the hospital (meaning I’ll be delayed if there is a sudden baby rush) but safe to say that baby will be making his big debut by the end of next week at the very latest.

I had another appointment with the midwife yesterday. The synopsis: Yep, still pregnant. Yep, still huge – baby continues to be in the 90th percentile for size, meaning he’s bigger than 90 per cent of babies at this gestational age. Yep, mommy and baby still healthy and hearty, if not a little stressed (he’s fine, I’m a little frazzled). Yep, we’ll see you at your appointment next Wednesday — if we don’t see you before that.

I was telling her what I posted about yesterday, that the waiting is not the worst thing but the false starts and rather nauseating pattern of raised expectations and dashed hopes. She smiled knowingly and with sympathy and said, “Oh yes, the third child syndrome.”

The what? There’s an actual SYNDROME and nobody told me? Apparently third babies tend to do this. They toy with mother’s sanity, playing these coy games. She assured me that fourth babies do not do this. I said it’s a wonder there ever ARE any fourth babies, after all this!!

She also made me laugh when she observed that the midwives say there is a certain “look” in the eyes of near-term mothers. At first, I thought she was meaning that there is some sort of ephemeral sign they can read, meaning the baby’s arrival is pending. But no, this is more of an emotional barometer, maybe a little bit too much white showing around the edges of mom’s eyes, or a bit of a twitch, that indicates a woman has had entirely enough of being pregnant, thank-you-very-much. And yes, she was reading hints of *that* look in my eyes. Snicker. I coulda told you that for free!

Not only is tomorrow baby’s official due date, it’s Simon’s birthday AND they’re forecasting a winter storm. I figure after nine months of desperately hoping that I don’t actually deliver on February 1, this combination of circumstances virtually guarantees that he will in fact arrive tomorrow. Murphy’s Third Child Law or something like that! And if he doesn’t come tomorrow, I’m thinking we’re going to have to go in and get him. I signed the paperwork yesterday to start setting up the induction for some time late next week. Damn stubborn babies who don’t listen from BEFORE day one — sheesh!!

So, I’ve been rather self-centred lately — but very much enjoying all your comments and kind words. It’s a beautiful sunny (if not a little frigid) morning here in Ottawa, and I’m about to drop the boys off at the nanny’s house for the day. Life is really not so bad, ya know? What’s lovely in your corner of the world today?

Beloved has resorted to drastic measures. He leaned in close to my uterus this morning and said, “We have candy! We have TV! We have video games! Just c’mon out and it’s all yours — follow the light!”

We were in the car later, and decided the lyrics of this song are surprisingly applicable right now:

Closing time – time for you to go out, go out into the world.
Closing time – turn the lights up over every boy and every girl.
Closing time – one last call for alcohol, so finish your whiskey or beer.
Closing time – you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.

Closing time – every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end…

And yet, like the party guest who won’t leave long after you’ve cleaned up the kitchen and washed off your makeup and even put on your fuzzy slippers, he just won’t leave!

By the time I figured out that the contractions were not the real deal yesterday morning, I was in a pretty foul mood. I felt supremely betrayed by my body, as false labour was nowhere near my radar screen, and it was outside the realm of the conceivable that what had started would not simply escalate into the arrival of my son. So when I realized otherwise, I was in one cranky-ass bad mood.

My mother, whom I had called early in the morning to put on high alert before the disappointment set in, called me back just before lunch time and offered to take me out – of the house, but mostly of my own head. I warned her that I was in no fit state for company, having lost an entire night’s sleep AND been recently denied something I desperately wanted (something I never take well!) and told her I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend any more time with me, so couldn’t imagine why she wanted to. She perservered, though, and we went out to the mall for a little lunch and a wander about.

By the time she dropped me off a couple of hours later, I felt 110% better. Nothing like a little lunch, a little retail therapy and some unconditional love to restore your perspective on the world. There will still be a baby — just not a baby TODAY. My mom rocks!

And then the midwife called late in the afternoon to check on me. When I told her what was (not) going on, she asked if I would like it if we had an impromptu appointment on the weekend just to ‘make sure everything was on track.’ How great is that?

So I met her at the (closed) midwives’ office this afternoon, and she checked out me and the baby. I had my first internal exam this pregnancy, and I’m a full centimeter dilated. Woot! (Might not seem like much, but I’m still six days away from my due date, and with Simon I was 10 days past and three hours into inducement hell and my cervix was still locked tight and “unfavourable” — perhaps one of the cruelest words in obstetrics.) She said my cervix is soft but still long, and she actually touched the top of baby’s head, which set me all a-tingle. She said she had been considering sweeping my membranes (basically, using her finger to separate the amniotic sac from the uterine wall, which often generates the hormones that trigger labour) but that it was her opinion that it wouldn’t do any good and would only cause me unnecessary discomfort. She did say, though, that “if we make it to the next appointment” she would try it then.

And the final word is pretty much what it has been all along — could be soon, could be two weeks. I can only laugh at this point. Could there be a worse torture for me that all this uncontrollable not knowing? I can’t imagine one!

But I received three e-mails this afternoon with varying degrees of curiousity (and the page views are insanely out of whack with the visitor count, meaning either y’all are clicking back regularly for updates or going mad with the refresh key looking for fun captchas!) so I figured an update was due — even if the baby isn’t. No real contractions since yesterday, so it looks we’re back in a holding pattern for at least a few days. And I’m okay with that!

But hey, if you need something to do OTHER than playing with the captcha oracle (which, admittedly, is a fun new game!) and you haven’t already done so, you could always mosey on over to the Canadian Blog Awards and vote for your favourite family blog…