I had a midwife appointment this morning at 11. Blood pressure is still good (110/70), urine is good, and I requested that I stop weighing myself. Haha, seriously though, it's depressing. Thankfully she had zero issue with that, so I will be avoiding that freaking scale from now on.
I measured 37.5 weeks, which puts me slightly off-track for growth, as I've been measuring 1-2 weeks ahead for the past month or so. But this is totally to be expected, considering the baby is pretty low. I think at this point with Noah I was measuring a little bit behind, even though I had been measuring ahead my whole pregnancy until then.
So yes, the baby is low, but he's not fully engaged... hence the popping up and down he's been doing for me the past few days, which I find rather annoying.
We discussed a few more things:
-I finalized my decision to not do GBS testing. I have many reasons for this. I don't feel like getting into it, though.
-I confirmed that we will delay cord clamping and cutting until it stops pulsing... this is what my midwife does as a practice anyway, but I wanted to make sure since I wanted this with Noah and they completely ignored us and clamped and cut his cord while he was still hanging upside down and screaming... there's nothing like respect from your birthing team.
-I okay'd the Vitamin K injection for the baby.
-I nixed the erythromicin for the baby's eyes... Noah didn't have any either. I don't have gonorrhea, so there is no point to it.
-I okay'd a shot of pitocin during pushing to prevent postpartum hemorrhage.
I got an internal done. I am, in fact, 2 cm dilated. The lower part of my cervix is at least 3cm, but it narrows a bit as it goes up. My cervix lengthens and shortens according to how low the baby's head it, but she said it's very soft. Basically, she confirmed everything I already knew.
She also did a stretch and sweep, at my request. Holy Hannah, that friggin hurts. I had her stop for a break halfway through. The longer they do it the more effective it is, so I didn't want her to stop completely, but I definitely needed a 30 second break!
I had a bunch of bright red bleeding afterward, which is what you want from a stretch and sweep. Otherwise you just got put through a bunch of pain for no reason. I've been spotting ever since, which is also normal/what you want. I'm now at 4 hours of contractions every 2 or 3 minutes. Some are painful, some aren't too bad. If I'm standing when I get them the back of my right leg goes kind of numb and tingly. It's weird. Oh, and my lower back is really crampy and painful.
This S&S most likely won't put me into labour, but hopefully it'll help with some early progression. I have another midwife appointment on Tuesday. This one is with my second midwife instead of my primary, so hopefully she'll do another stretch and sweep. Christine seems to think that she will, because I actually want one. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I don't see Christine again for 2 weeks, when I'm 39+1. That seems so far away.
I'm quite happy to be 37 weeks and already have 2cm behind me in this journey to 10. I'm interested to see where I'm at by my next appointment!
Hopefully you will be close to holding your little one after this appointment. I've heard the sweeps are pretty painful as well, but I know of several women who have gone into labor within a week of having this done. Amazing you are already at a 2, hope this baby comes quickly and soon!
ReplyDeleteIts so exciting how close you are!! Sounds like everything is looking great! I told my midwife i wasn't weighing myself anymore around like 30 weeks, i got too depressed!
ReplyDeleteQuick question- how and why did you decide to stretch and sweep? I'm just wondering since you're still a few weeks away from due date, I always thought that was for people at due date to speed things up....I'm not questioning your decision, just asking for more information as I didn't know people do it farther out. Wondering if this is why you're contracting but not really progressing.....has your midwife said anything?? Also does the pitocin during pushing help get the placenta out? I don't know about that either as I don't believe we do that in the states and I was never asked about that during my natural med-free childbirth. Hopefully you're getting closer and closer to baby arrival time. I know how hard it is to go night after night with no sleep and contractions. I did it back to back for 2 nights with no sleep or sitting/laying down and very close contractions. Hang in there and hope you meet your baby soon. :)
ReplyDeleteKitty
In the birth story post I explained why we did the stretch and sweep. Thankfully I WAS progressing throughout those contractions!
DeleteThe pitocin injection is to prevent postpartum hemorrhage. It's a good idea to do, especially at home, because a hemorrhage is a lot harder to treat after it happens, and the pitocin prevents it in most cases. I didn't get my pitocin injection until after the placenta was delivered, because it all happened so quickly.
I hope you'll reconsider doing the GBS test.
ReplyDeleteWe had a homebirth in 2010 and hadn't yet gotten the results back from our GBS test, so our midwives didn't worry about it.
Our otherwise perfectly healthy baby boy Wren died 11 hours later from GBS.
GBS isn't much of a risk these days precisely because we have such an easy, effective, proven, protocol for dealing with it. Untreated it is a very nasty, quick, deadly disease.