Month: January 2008

Hey, don’t say I didn’t warn you that this blog was going all-pregnancy, all the time!

I went to an orientation session at the Montfort hospital last night. I was not overly receptive to the Montfort at the beginning of this pregnancy (Tristan and Simon were born at the Civic) and I was not overly receptive to this session, but I figured it would eliminate just a little bit more uncertainty for me and I could pretend to have more control over things than I really do. In these post-SARS days, you can’t actually visit the L&D floor unless you’re delivering or delivering someone who is delivering, but they have a lovely powerpoint show with photos of the L&D and maternity areas. I rolled my eyes at the idea, but found the session interesting and helpful… even for a been-there, done-that mom like me!

I have to admit, even though I have been less than keen about the Montfort I left feeling extremely positive and pleased with our choices so far — both the midwife route and the Montfort. The private rooms are AMAZING looking, nicely painted in pastel colours with pull-out sofa beds and comfy chairs. They are as nice if not nicer than the delivery rooms at the Civic, and don’t even compare to the private rooms at the Civic. The nurse giving the session kept saying that if you were delivering with a midwife, you’d be leaving within a couple of hours after the birth, and I finally had to check to make sure I had the option of staying in the hospital or not. The room full of mostly new parents laughed when she said, “Oh, you must have children at home already?” and laughed even louder when I admitted to having two boys at home and the nurse clucked appreciatively and said, “Of course you can stay, dear, as long as you want!”

One more piece of the puzzle locked into place – and I’ve even figured out that of the four different routes we’ve recently driven to and from the Montfort, there’s only five minutes and less than five kilometers difference regardless of which route you take. Not that I’m anxious or anything. Whatever gave you that idea?

Wow! I can’t believe there are more than 60 comments on the “guess that birthdate” post!! What fun! But, for the record, anyone who guessed later than February 7 (when I’ll be a week overdue) or any hour that involves an overnight labour, you’re getting a lump of coal instead of a book if you win the contest!!

I had an appointment with the midwife last week that sent me home driving with my legs crossed, convinced that the baby was about to come shooting out at a stop light if I was not careful. I’ve since settled back down into a holding pattern of waiting (there are, after all, still many days until my due date) but it was exciting to be talking about BIRTH instead of just pregnancy.

They’re keeping a close eye on the size of the baby, and I’ll likely have another ultrasound this week to see just how big this big baby will be. (Hmmm, sounds JUST like Simon. Again!) Apparently the midwives have special protocols with the hospital when a baby gets to be this size. I’m trying not to think about it.

And, while it’s still three weeks to my official due date, the midwife suggested several natural induction techniques (clinically unproven, she stressed) that I might want to consider, so on the weekend I picked myself up some evening primrose oil and some red raspberry leaf tea. I took a couple of the EPO capsules last night (one orally and the other one – well, not orally) and there’s still no baby this morning. So much for instant gratification!

Another thing that got me all excited about an early debut for this little guy was that although my last day of work would have been this coming Thursday, they suggested that I might consider being done a little earlier than that. So tomorrow is my last official day of work until 2009. Can I get a hallellujah for one-year maternity leave? So many reasons to love my country’s social net. (And yes, I know it’s not perfect and not everybody benefits, but it benefits me and at 100 months pregnant you go ahead and TRY to tell me that it’s NOT all about me at this point.)

So we spent the weekend doing little things like assembling the cradle (I love our wooden cradle!) and cleaning the car seat and installing it in the van. We drove out to the Montfort so Beloved would know where it is, which seems rather prudent, and debated the most efficient way to get there from Barrhaven. (There isn’t one.)

I’m ready! Well, I’m readier, and that’s a start. And I’ve decided when I’m going to have this baby. Simon was due on January 22 and born on February 1. This baby is due on February 1, so I figure there is a lovely symmetry in him arriving on January 22, right? At say, 2 pm, after a five hour labour. Yep, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it. Are you listening, baby boy??

The nice thing about a third pregnancy is that a lot of the fear has been beaten out of you by experience.

In the final stages of my pregnancy with Tristan, I worried about everything. I was already in a state of heightened anxiety because of everything related to his conception (he’s my IVF baby) and the loss of his twin, and the echogenic cardiac focus. Add to that the regular first-time-mom anxieties (“Will I be a good mom?” “How will I know when he’s hungry / cold / bored / in need of emergency medical attention?” “Does labour REALLY hurt that much?” etc) and the sundry anxieties thrust upon you by reading too much on the Internet (“Should I have bought the Eddie Bauer car seat instead of the Graco one?” “Do I really need a wipes-warmer?” “Can you ever really have enough receiving blankets?” etc.) and I was pretty much a nervous wreck.

With Simon, I was over a lot of that, but worried myself nearly to death about how I would handle two, and whether we had ‘wrecked’ our perfect little family triad by adding another person (truly, that seems like the dumbest thing in the world in retrospect, but I honestly worried myself to tears over it more than once back then.) And of course, it was a hell of a handful to have a newborn and a not-quite-two-year-old in the house, and I think I was justified in worrying how I’d handle all that.

With this baby, I’m confident in both my body’s ability to birth this baby and my parenting skills, leaving me free to focus the entirety of my anxious obsessing (and that, for the record, is a LOT) on the big question of WHEN???

The midwife has been gently reminding me throughout our appointments that third labours are generally quite fast. I was blissfully resistant to this idea at first, telling myself (and anyone who would listen) that my labour with Tristan was more than a day and with Simon nearly a day, so anything shorter than twelve or fourteen hours would seem like a walk in the park. Then I started to really think about my labour with Simon, and while the induction took most of a day and a night, the hardest part was convincing him to leave the uterus in the first place. Once he started moving, he really came flying down the birth canal like a house on fire. While it took more than 20 hours to go from nothing to 5 cm of dilation, I went from 5 cm to 10 cm in about 20 minutes, and Simon came out with just a few pushes.

I keep turning this over in my mind. Twenty minutes, eh? That’s not a long time. I was thinking about it yesterday after work, standing at the bus stop at the Rideau Centre, when I began to wonder with a sickened kind of fascination what I would do if my water broke on the bus. The bus home takes me 40 minutes in the absolute opposite direction of the hospital. Would I ride home and have Beloved take me back to the hospital – in rush hour traffic? Would I get off and take a bus back in the other direction? Would I ask for an ambulance? Playing out these various scenarios not only occupied me for most of the ride home but convinced me that taking the new van back and forth to work for the next week was well worth the $40 in parking fees it would cost me!

(The fact that we’ve been watching the entire catalogue of back episodes of House on DVD for the last month has, by the way, honed my ability to envision a medical disaster to perfection. Perhaps we should have been rewatching Lost instead.)

So I’ve been speculating on the what-ifs of an early labour, but I’m still mostly convinced this guy will be a late arrival. I keep telling myself that at the very outside, there’s only about five weeks left before he gets his eviction notice. No doubt, the Player to be Named Later is much easier to care for on the inside. He doesn’t need to be fed, or changed. While I would love to be able to put him down for just a little while, at least my arms are both still free. He’s low maintenance when he’s on the inside. For those reasons, I’m happy to keep him there. Of course, there are about a hundred reasons why I want to evict him, primarily simply because I can’t wait to meet him and get on with the next phase of the adventure. An end to my elephantine size, restless legs, aching pelvis, itchy nipples, inability to eat or draw a deep breath, lumbering gait, throbbing knees, reflux, and need to pee every eleven seconds would be nice, too.

I know I can handle just about anything, but the uncertainty is my real nemesis. The waiting and the not knowing. Uncertainty is to control freaks like me what snakes are to Indiana Jones. My kingdom for a crystal ball!

Now that the holiday season is officially packed away for another year and the boys are back in school, I am running out of distractions. Still another three-and-a-half weeks to go until my due date, which I fully expect to stretch out to an agonizing five weeks or more left in this pregnancy.

And so begins the obsessing. Since I can’t seem to get my head out of my uterus (and lord knows there’s little enough room in there right now as it is!) consider yourself officially warned that blog is about to go all-pregnancy, all the time.

Baby boy will be full term (37 weeks) on Friday, and given the latest ultrasound projections, he’s well over 7 lbs by now. Any time now is fine with me, even though we are not exactly ready in that the baby clothes have not been washed nor put in drawers, I do not have a birth plan or a packed bag, we have no idea what to call him, we haven’t really made any plans as to what to do with Tristan and Simon should I ever in fact go into labour, and I’m still loosely in denial that there will in fact be a baby who arrives at the end of all this.

I’ve developed a new fascination with the signs of early labour. With Tristan and Simon, I didn’t have (or, at least, didn’t recognize) any pre-term contractions. Only when I was hooked up to a monitor when I was at a past-due checkup for Simon and the nurse said, “That’s a nice healthy contraction” did I realize that what I had been assuming was the baby stretching was actually a Braxtion Hicks type contraction. So now that I know what they are, I’ve noticed them coming and going in waves — but of course, that’s all that happens. (Ha, look, there’s one now!)

The boys were both late. Labour started two days after my EDD with Tristan (and he was born 27 hours later) and I was induced 10 days after my EDD with Simon (and he was born 23 hours later.) I see this as foreshadowing — they’re reluctant to leave the womb at birth, and I’ll probably never be able to kick them out of the house as adults!! I also see this as confirmation that I have a mighty comfy uterus, and no expectation of seeing this baby any time before his official due date of February 1.

But, you also know I’m an irrepressible optimist. (I’m just not sure if hoping for an early delivery is optimism or insanity!) So, bearing (snicker) that in mind, tell me your stories. I need straws at which to grasp, bloggy peeps! Did you deliver early? Late? On your due date? And what was your first sign that labour was really under way?