Same old song that you've probably read elsewhere…

I am home. Avery’s in bed with me and I’m hoping she’ll take a nap in a few minutes so I will make this relatively brief and give you all the blow by blow at the same time.

At my NST Thursday, ctx were every 2-3 minutes and very painful. Lying on my back in recline is also painful and I’m sure that was part of it. Aver 2 hours on their monitor they were prepared to send me to L&D but they don’t do VBAC so I said (at the same time the OB was telling them to do this) that I wanted to check baby’s position and if not breach, I wanted to go over to my planned delivery spot which is VBAC friendly.

Baby flipped! So I left there and went to get some food. Headed to the VBAC hosp. for more monitoring. They were (well we were all convinced) that fluids, food (well I didn’t tell them about the food) and oral ice water would slow the ctx down and nothing was happening. The nurse said my cervix was so soft she almost couldn’t feel it, and that it felt like I had a cervical band that once blown would allow cervix to dilate in a hurry.

After a whole day on the monitors, nothing changed except I got more and more miserable. They’re like, “can you feel these ctx” as I’m writhing on the bed going, uh, yeah.

To address some of the questions:
The ctx combined with a distended uterus from the large baby and excess fluid concern the OB because of my uterine scar. Add the history of abruption to that, and there’s a decent case for letting labor progress or even delivering surgically, just because those risks and my distance from the hospital (40 min) make them piled on top of each other fairly scary, both for us and for the OB’s malpractice co. I’m sure.

So that’s why they would have delivered early had the amnio gone well. That, and had the amnio given the green light, I would have been a better VBAC candidate than I will be in a week or 2 because of his size and his propensity for flipping from head down to breach in all that fluid. My options get narrower and narrower the longer this goes on.

They won’t use steriods or drugs to stop labor because both of those things can have a very negative effect on blood sugar. I was offered Terb once but refused it because I know that for me it only works in the short term, and I’m not willing to stay on it for weeks at a time in order to stop the ctx.

For my part, I’m in pain. And knowing it’s doing nothing to change my cervix makes me really fucking angry.

The OB and I talked at length today and she said again that looking at the monitoring strips, you’d think I would have been holding a baby right now. “IT doesn’t make sense” were her words. They are regular, they are painful, they put pressure on my pelvis and from top down, and they don’t slow down with fluid or change of position. I guess I’m just going to be in “early labor” until the baby comes? Awesome. The OB said if my cervix gave us even a little action, we’d be on the way and no one would be worried about lungs. It’s just that they can’t discard the science of the test because whatif. I guess the malpractice calculation is more in favor of leaving the baby in even with the historical risks, than getting the baby out interventively.

She also feels that given my cervical history my cervix may not dilate on its own. Giving it till 40 weeks to do so is, I don’t think, an option for me both because I might die or go on a homicidal rage before then, and because the high risk guys are so concerned with uterine rupture due to these neverending ctx.

The best news of the whole week was that a) baby has flipped head down and b) OB will break waters (if I ask her to) by using pinpricks instead of the hook, which will discourage cord prolapse and give me a better chance at VBAC. Why am I willing to go interventive at 35, 37 weeks? Because it beats a c section, dude. I never thought, as a holistically trained homebirth doula, that I’d be begging for a c section, but I was. And this is middle ground, and I’m OK with it.

c) we discussed weight today and how they can be off sometimes on weight and it sounded like as long as I was game to try a VBAC she’d be game for it no matter what the estimated weight said. THat’s very good news.

So. Provided I have the energy and stamina to go with it, I’ll be set up (I hope) at 37w for another amnio and a slightly interventive (water breaking first, cervical band breaking maybe at the same time) vaginal birth.

The longer I laid in that fucking hospital bed the more dreaded a c section. Like I told the OB though, ask me again in a week and I may tell you something totally different. Thursday I was ready to get cut open.

Right now I’m just glad to be home. Nothing has changed, contractions are still regular, 2-5 min apart and painful, but at least I can get up and move around a bit when they get bad.