39 Weeks Pregnant

Posted By: Heather No Comments January 10, 2012

Monday night I started feeling sick. I had a headache, couldn't sleep, upset stomach, etc. I spent the whole night trying to get comfortable and trying to kick my awful headache. At about 4am I threw up, but I was able to sleep after that. I had a doctor's appointment on Tuesday morning at 9:30 and initially Mark was not going to go with me. (After my rough night – he decided he'd better) So we got to the appointment, my blood pressure was 160/102 (really bad) the non-stress test went fine, but when I told them about the headache that I had the night before and the vomiting – they had us go over to the birthing center/hospital for additional testing.

We got checked in at the birthing center at about 11am and weren't able to leave until 6pm last night. When I got there, they put the fetal heart monitor on me (and I think that they had found my heart rate – which was 90, not the baby's). Anyway, 90 is really low for a baby's heart rate and the nurse thought he was in distress, so they called more nurses in and scared the crap out of Mark and me. They made me get on my hands and knees with my head down while they tried to locate his heart rate again.

After that, I was strapped to the monitor non-stop. They did a pelvic exam on me (which is something that they weren't going to do because of my group b strep status), but I was able to find out that I'm only dilated to 1cm and my cervix is not ready for labor. After they had monitored me for what seemed like forever, they came back in and wanted to do a contraction stress test. This is where they give me Pitocin to induce contractions so that they can watch our baby's heart rate and see how he will respond to labor. If his heart rate decelerates during a contraction, it means that he is in distress and they would need to induce us right away.

Mark and I were so emotionally conflicted. We were feeling completely out of control with everything that was happening. It felt like all of doors to a natural childbirth were closing. We made the decision to do the test. If our baby was in trouble, we needed to know. I could never forgive myself if we didn't do the test and something went wrong. He did beautifully! Then the midwife and doctor suggested that we could either start taking measures for induction before we left for the evening, or we could come back in the morning to start the induction process which includes another non-stress test, amniotic fluid ultrasound then insertion a drug called Cytotec to soften/ripen my cervix. We decided to do the latter. I was exhausted, and felt that in order to make the best decisions for myself and the baby, I needed to get some decent sleep.

We went home, cried, and tried to come to terms with the events of the day. We hadn't made peace with the idea of being induced, but if the doctor and the midwife believe it is the route we need to take – then we must trust their knowledge and experience. So, we went to bed early and prepared for the unexpected. At the appointment today, we had another non stress test, which was beautiful. We had our amniotic fluid index ultrasound, which also went great. Then, quite unexpectedly the midwife came in and told us that based on today's results… they did not believe that we needed to start induction. They will give us until my due date. So now we are back to the waiting game. (Which is fine with me for right now) If I haven't gone into labor by my due date, I will be induced for sure and I suppose I am at peace with that.

Tags: baby