Hot, Humid and Overdue = Impossibly Cranky Pregnant Lady

Six days overdue now, and though I had a lot of encouraging contractions last night, they petered out when I went to bed. We've scheduled an induction for Friday night, but we really hope this kid will find his way out before then.  We'll see how the spicy Indian curry work this evening.  

Paranoia Strikes Deep

Yet another trip to the hospital, and home again. This time it was because Ciaran was just so still for so long, I started to get worried. Spurred on by our doctor's insistence that there's no such thing as crying wolf too much at this stage, Sean and I decided to call the doctor, who recommended we go in to the hospital for a non-stress test. 

After a few words with the intake guy in the ER, who was (a) lackadaisical (at best) and (b) seemingly incompetent (looking me up twice to no avail, and failing to take down our insurance information despite the insurance card we handed him), we headed up to the Labor and Delivery unit. The non-stress test consists of two monitors on my belly, one measuring contractions and the other measuring the baby's movement and heart rate. Just about as soon as I was hooked up Ciaran started boogying, which was great.  And I had several (weak) contractions, pretty regular, but not strong or regular enough to stick around.

Who knows, maybe I'll be back sooner rather than later. What was great to know is that the nurses were fantastic and made me feel like we did the right thing coming in. 

Curious

I was wondering what our little BO'B widget would do when I passed my due date... now we're counting up, apparently.  

Note

Due date feels like any other day. 

Awaiting Arrival

Due date is tomorrow, yet we still have no sign of labor. We are now visiting the doctor twice a week and he may induce next Tuesday if the little one still refuses to show himself.

In the meantime here are some stolen moments from the ultrasound. Zee says he looks like me. I hope he favors his mother.



Zee has gathered a lot of suggestions for how to encourage our son--many of which seem to involve baked goods. She experienced a number of strong contractions whilst shopping at Value City this afternoon, so perhaps further adventures in egregious frugality will expedite this process.

Fingers crossed.

Still No Kid

You'll notice the widget to your right says "5 days."  Well, at our last appointment the doctor made me feel like I'm actually going backwards!  Still 50% effaced, but the kid apparently isn't yet "engaged" in my pelvis. And there's nothing else going on that might indicate impending birth. He's just happy as a clam in there. A friend whose due date was 1 day before mine already has her precious little girl, and I am nothing short of insanely envious.  My sister tells me that she had no signs of impending delivery until she went into labor. A friend was dilated to 1 cm for 3 weeks. Yet another friend's delivery seemed far-off until her water suddenly broke. 

All I can say is that these last weeks feel ETERNAL. Any suggestions how to coax this kid out???

Ordeal

During an otherwise lovely visit to Grand Rapids, where all of my siblings and my dad and step-mom had the very rare and wonderful opportunity to hang out together, I had a little scare. As I tried to go to sleep, my heart started to skip beats, beat very quickly and/or very slowly, and sometimes pound, sometimes barely beat at all. It was all over the place.  I waited about 2 hours, hoping the trick my uncle taught me (he's a doctor) would work. Nope. So I called my OB and she said that I needed to go to the hospital. Right about the time we left for the hospital my heart rate regularized, but was still beating pretty fast. So Jeanne took me to the nearest ER.

Thankfully, having a giant pregnant belly gets one treated pretty quickly in the ER. We heard Ciaran's heartbeat -- strong and healthy (whew!), then geared up for some tests. They thought there was a possibility I had a  blood clot, apparently not uncommon (but still dangerous) during pregnancy. So I was hooked up to a heart monitor, and then had an EKG. There were two potential abnormalities, so they ordered a chest X-ray and a nuclear test where they (gulp) injected radioactive material into my blood and took pictures of my blood flow between my heart and lungs. 

As a very important side-note, all of these procedures were safe for the baby, especially as I am considered full-term. The radiation I had was less than a CAT Scan, and they halved the dose to make it even safer. And the ER doctor consulted my OB, so I felt okay about getting this all done -- well, as okay as I could.

The good news is all the tests came back normal. The bad news is they still don't know what the heck caused the irregularities in the first place.  Hopefully it won't come back... I don't have to know what it was as long as I don't have to go through that again! 

So I pulled an all-nighter, slept until lunch, and plan on a good night sleep tonight.