So it has been a while since I last posted. The third trimester ended up going by much quicker (and ending much sooner) than I had anticipated. I kept meaning to sit down and write about what was happening, but I always seemed to end up working or napping or nesting instead.
To make a long story short, my frame of mind improved considerably after going back on anti-depressants. Thanks to my little happy pills I was able to cheer up and soldier on. Another huge step in the right direction was changing my Obgyn. I finally admitted to myself that I just couldn't get comfortable with the doctor I had been seeing and moved to an all-female practice recommended by my sister.
This ended up being the best decision I could have possibly made. My doctor at the new practice immediately recognized an iron deficiency that was making me feel like garbage, and got me on medication to treat the nausea that had been stopping me from eating and drinking enough to feel well. On top of all that, I finally felt like I was part of the conversation when it came to my pregnancy. Feeling respected and heard helped to make me feel safer and more confident as well.
And... it's a good thing that I felt that way, because the last few weeks of this pregnancy ended up being full of surprises. My maternal fetal medicine doctor had warned me a while back that inducing early (at 38 weeks) was possible and that no matter how healthy everything looked he would not let me go past my due date. He joked that if I farted wrong he would make me have the baby. So, while I knew that delivering at 38 weeks was a possibility, I had kind of been expecting to get at least another week along before we actually induced. My blood pressure had been great, so what was the hurry, right?
At my 36 week Obgyn visit they told me that we would be inducing at 38 weeks after all. My cervix had already started to soften up and even though my blood pressure had remained in good shape, protein had started to appear in my urine and they felt like the safest thing to do would be to go ahead and have me give birth. I freaked out a little when it began to sink in that I would have to GIVE BIRTH in two weeks. I wasn't ready!! There was a bathroom to finish, a bedroom to paint, a month's worth of work to finish and schedule to pay the bills while I was recovering. Plus, I hadn't really started processing all the emotions necessary to deal with pushing a baby out of my body. But at least I had two more weeks to work on everything. Two more weeks!
When I visited my doctors the following week I found out that the induction would actually start the evening BEFORE I officially hit 36 weeks. That left me with one day less to prepare, and sent me reeling a bit. But the next morning when my Obgyn called I got thrown for an even bigger loop. The protein in my urine had increased and they didn't like the too-abundant amount of fluid around the baby. Instead of being induced next week, they wanted to start that night. I found out at ten in the morning and was asked to be at the hospital that evening at seven pm.
OMG!! I tried my best to jam all of my panic away in the back closet of my mind and started making a list of things I needed to do in the next several hours. Call my mom, talk to my sister about watching Charlie, pack a hospital bag, write a birth plan, stick an auto-responder on to my email account, cancel projects that were due that week, generally go crazy...
Somehow I managed to get it all done with enough time to spare to grab a quick dinner on the way to the hospital. Scott and I did our best to hash out our about to have a baby feelings over chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant, then hopped in the car and headed to the hospital. We got a kick out of surprising our waitress. She asked when the baby was due, and I told her in about an hour. Her face! Haha.
We ended up arriving at the hospital right on time, which seemed miraculous considering I have been about 15 minutes late to EVERYTHING for the past two months. But then the nurse at the check-in desk forgot about us for 45 minutes and we ended up getting into our room about an hour late. Whoops! Luckily, no-one seemed too phased about adjusting the schedule, so there we were. The induction was officially underway around 10 pm. I'll share more details on that whole process in my next post.
Continue on for Part Two, in which I actually have a baby!
