A long & winding update that likely makes no sense to anyone but me
32 weeks. Getting way too close!
At my last appointment with Jenny, I found out why I’ve had so much pain lately. Since I’d been having tons of contractions, including a few that were hard to walk through, she wanted to check my cervix. Thankfully, it’s still closed and firm and everything is good there…just my irritable uterus acting up, just as it did my entire pregnancy with G and has so far throughout this one, too. My uterus definitely likes to protest all the stretching! It’s annoying, but as long as it’s not harmful, it’s something I continue to ignore. I’m just thrilled to have avoided bedrest this time around; last time we didn’t know what to expect from the contractions, so we had to play it safe.
But anyway, when she checked my cervix she commented that she could feel Hermano’s head, and that it was quite low. She said he’s at -2 station! My word! That’s almost “engaged”! I wasn’t at this point until the last few weeks with G. She said she’s not concerned because it’s somewhat common for the baby to be that low in a subsequent pregnancy, since the pelvic muscles are so lax & stretched out. She said that that’s the reason I’m feeling so much pain and pressure in my pelvis, though. No doubt!
For the past few weeks I’ve felt like the boy is going to fall out. And over the past week, it’s gotten significantly worse, so I suspect he’s lower than -2 now…we’ll see next week when I go for my next checkup. I’m in near-constant pain, and at times it’s so extreme that I can’t walk—I simply cannot put one foot in front of the other because it hurts so badly. Philip sometimes has to help me get my feet up into bed at night, because it’s excruciating to lift them myself. At times, I can feel his head bulging, ahem, down “there”, and sometimes when I sit, I literally feel the bulge underneath me. It definitely feels weird. It’s just this huge pressure, all the time. I felt all this during the last 2 weeks of my pregnancy with G, when he was completely engaged, so I kind of won’t be surprised to find that Hermano is engaged when I go in again next week. Luckily Jenny said that it really doesn’t mean I’ll go into labor early; she said I can literally walk around like this for the next 7-8 weeks. OUCH. I’ve been spending lots of time sitting on my birthing ball, which is a great source of relief.
We’re busy getting geared up with our final preparations for Hermano’s arrival (sadly, he still has no name and we’re no closer to deciding on one, although Philip is 100% set on Desmond…so if we can’t agree on something else before he’s born, then Philip wins!). We have much to get done and we’re fast running out of time.
I interviewed a pediatrician last Friday. We had called office after office, searching for a hands-off pedi who would not require antibiotic treatment for GBS in the baby, should I be positive and deliver without antibiotic treatment for myself (which I would NOT get). Finally we found a large practice in “the city” that has a pedi who will honor our wishes. It’s not their standard practice; of course the standard is to pump both mom & baby with antibiotics even though the chances of infection are extremely rare. But he is willing to allow both mom & baby to stay antibiotic-free, provided we do these things: Baby has to stay in the hospital for 48 hrs and have 2 CBCs drawn to watch for infection. If there is a sign of infection, either through observation or through the CBC, then they’ll administer antibiotics at that time. I’m fine with that; it’s treating babies (& moms) who are NOT sick that is ridiculous and dangerous.
On top of being cool about the GBS possibility, he’s also very hands-off about letting us decline all the silly newborn procedures. No hep B shot, no antibiotic goop on his eyes, no bath after birth, etc. He also said he doesn’t give a big fuss about us declining vaccinations, although he still recommends them. He said if we don’t want to do them, then he has a policy of agreeing to disagree, and leaving it alone. That’s great! We’ve received a lot of “lecturing” from our pedis over the past years, regarding our declining certain vaccinations for G.
We also had to find a pedi who would do circumcision, and while he doesn’t, he said that there will be someone in the practice who will make rounds and be able to do the circ for us while we’re still in the hospital. The problem we ran into with G is that our chosen pedi didn’t do circs, and we were advised (erroneously) by one of the LCs to delay the circ because it could interfere with breastfeeding. So we waited, and we ended up having to trek out of the house and to a urologist’s office to have it done, when G was 8 days old and I wasn’t doing well at all, physically nor emotionally. It was a horrible day-long experience that I loathe to go through again. So I want to be sure that this time, it’s all set up beforehand, and that Hermano is circ’ed ASAP after birth. It in no way interferes with breastfeeding; in fact, the pedi said that if nothing else, it wakes the baby up and causes him to want to nurse more. I’ve always suspected that the LC was anti-circ and that was her way of trying to make sure we didn’t have it done.
Lastly, he’s very pro-breastfeeding. A must-have! Lots of pedis will say they are, but when you ask questions about what they’d recommend in certain scenarios, you find out that they really aren’t. If the answer is ever to supplement a breastfed baby, then they are NOT pro-breastfeeding. He said he would never recommend it for any situation other than severe dehydration where it’s clear that for some reason, breastfeeding was not working—and he added that before supplementing, he’d set up consults with an LC in order to make sure there was nothing else that could be done first. So yeah, he passed! That’s a big hurdle down and a bit of stress off my back.
However, I still have the huge decision of whether or not to stay with Jenny and have him in the hospital. A hospital birth is not part of who I am anymore, knowing the things that I now know about labor, birth, and afterwards. My deepest desire is to have him at the birth center, where NONE of the things listed above will matter! All of the defensive measures I’ve had to plan out are related to the hospital-birth scenario. So…why do I not just go with the birth center?
The reason I’ve not completely moved to the birth center and the midwife’s care there, is because she can’t attend a delivery before 37 weeks (silly laws). I fear that I’ll go into labor before then, and if I do, then I would end up in the hospital with an OB handling the delivery. YIKES. That’s unfathomable to me and is the last thing I’d want to happen, so for now I have to stick with Jenny. With Jenny, I’m pretty safe from that scenario, because she can attend deliveries from 35 weeks. So unless I go into labor before 35 weeks, I’m safely in the care of a midwife. I won’t even entertain going into labor before 35 weeks because if I do, that means Jenny’s backup OB, Dr. A, will be who I get stuck with. YIKES. I’ve had to deal with him on a couple of occasions, and I don’t like him or his philosophies at all. He was the one who recommended that I have the D&C for my miscarriage last fall, when I clearly didn’t need one (and Jenny & I proved him wrong). I reeeeeeeeally don’t want to end up with him, so let’s hope the next 3 weeks are uneventful!
Now…if I can go till 37 weeks, I will very likely be switching to the birth center, where I feel I can have the most ideal, hands-off birth possible. You get to go there, labor in peace and without intervention, deliver your baby in the position and manner that you choose, and for all practical purposes, be left alone. You stay for a few hours after the birth to make sure there are no problems, and then if all’s well, you get to go home. No hospital stay, just directly home, a few hours after your delivery. No fighting with nurses over interventions, no making sure they stay away from your baby with the eye goop and the needles, no fighting about the GBS/antibiotics controversy, no nurses barging into your room to wake you at night, and no staph infections lurking around (G caught a staph infection while we were in the hospital after his birth). Also in this scenario, if I was GBS positive, the situation is handled completely differently; the birth center midwife’s policy is for the parents to just carefully watch the baby for several days after the birth, and to call if there is any hint of something not normal.
This is what I want, and I hope this is what I’ll be able to have. The pedi I mentioned earlier told me that if I do go with the birth center birth, that all I have to do is contact them ASAP and bring the baby in for a checkup at 48 hours old. They can do the circumcision in the office in this scenario, as well as the couple of newborn procedures that I would want done (PKU screening, for one).
So, these are some of the many burdens on my mind lately. Lots of stress and lots of decisions to be made. But finding a good pedi was a big, big hurdle to have passed, and I feel much better knowing we have this done. Now I have other things to worry about and focus on getting done. More later.
