Zatera Ul

One good thing I did for the pregnancy was to set aside one extra-large maternity dress for the last month of pregnancy, when I knew I would be really huge and tired of all my other maternity clothes. But next time I’m going to have at least four more of them in reserve, for weeks 39, 40, 41, and 42–OLC was born over two weeks past the conventional due date. The wait, with occasional false alarms, dragged on slowly. There was some time pressure as well, since in Minnesota midwives can only attend home births before 43 weeks. (OLC was born at 42 weeks+2 days.) At least, having a midwife, there was no pressure to induce labor.

It was annoying, though, at one of the last prenatal appointments (with OLC already a little overdue), when I felt like I was starting to go into labor, that our midwife became concerned because she was hearing the fetal heartbeat higher up in my abdomen than she expected to, both by fetoscope and Doppler, and wanted us to go for an ultrasound to make sure that the baby wasn’t breech. Any labor that might have been starting came to a screeching halt; I felt derailed because all I wanted to do was go home to my nest, settle in, and have a baby, not run around and get ultrasounded to death again. Also, I felt that a breech position was highly unlikely, given where the baby’s kicks were landing, and that I was getting more “prenatal scare” than prenatal care at that point. On the way home I felt more kicks, right where they should be. The midwife did some calling around and called us with directions to a diagnostic center that did ultrasounds, telling us that we could get in first thing in the morning.

We went there first thing in the morning, with MFH missing work to drive me there, and were told that the ultrasound technicians didn’t come in until later, and the earliest they could do it was 10:30. So we had to go home, and come back later.

I hate getting ultrasounded, even more so now that I have been, twice. For this one, they wouldn’t let MFH take pictures of the images, for some liability avoidance reason. The tech told us the baby looked good, wasn’t breech, and would be almost 9 lbs in weight. The due date was estimated as Oct. 25, same date as the ultrasound in June had given. So we had at least a little medically-sanctioned validation for going post-dates. Our midwife had apparently ordered a biophysical profile while we were at it. The tech did it, but then told us to go out in the waiting room and see if we could wake up the baby, because no observed movement yields a low BPP score. Well, sugar usually got the baby going, so I wolfed down some of the free snacks in the waiting room, and in a few minutes felt some kicking. It lasted long enough for the tech to see it too. Then back home, and back to waiting.

A week later, after more “prelabor”, another prenatal appointment, and a trip here (picture what the potion ingredients store in Diagon Alley of the Harry Potter world must look like, but run by hippies) for homeopathic remedies (recommended by our midwife, but taken by me with a large dose of skepticism, since I believe homeopathy is unlikely to work unless I believe in it), labor finally started for real. To be continued.