39 Week Appointment and Some Big News

Yesterday we went back to the doctor's office for my 39 week appointment.

This one was bound to be exciting for a couple reasons. For one, ever since I measured 1cm dilated at my last appointment, I've been trying to encourage the process through various means, and was excited to see if any of it had paid off.

Also I was scheduled for an ultrasound, and have been looking forward to seeing how she was growing. I've had two ultrasounds in the past two months -- in the first one the baby measured unusually large (76th percentile) and in the second, she was right on track (54th percentile), which just goes to show you how imperfect these things are. So I was less concerned with her potential size and more interested to see how she's positioned and to make sure everything looks good otherwise.

I should have been concerned about the size. She's back to being big. Quite big, as in she's measuring well over 8 lbs. "She has a very round belly," the tech told me cheerfully.

But it wasn't the belly that concerned my doctor. Rather, she explained to me that the baby's shoulders are measuring broad, and that's the kind of thing that makes doctors nervous because it increases the risk of getting a shoulder stuck in the birth canal.

"Ouch," was my reaction.

Next came the cervical check. I've had my hopes up this past week that I could do some basic tricks to help speed up this process and help with dilation. So I've been walking every day, sitting on an exercise ball, eating spicy food at night, and, well, you know. The other thing you're supposed to do, that your partner has to help you with, that I can't mention because my dad reads this blog.

None of it worked. I'm fully effaced but I'm still only 1cm dilated, the same as I was at 38 weeks.

So my doctor sat us down for a "little discussion." She told us flat out she didn't intend to let the baby go too far overdue because of her size and the breadth of her shoulders. She asked us how we felt about induction.

As it happens, I've been thinking quite a bit about induction over the past couple of days, although I've never considered it as a likelihood before. My thought process went a bit like this:

"Scott's leaving town the middle of next month. I really, really, really hope I don't go a few weeks overdue, because it would suck to come home with a newborn and then say goodbye to my husband for a week. I wonder what my doctor's feelings on scheduled inductions are."

Then I went and did a whole bunch of research on the subject, most of which agrees that unless there's a sound medical reason for it, most doctors don't like to schedule inductions before the 41st week or so. I'm not against elective induction, but at the same time, the thought of asking my doctor to do it just because I'm physically uncomfortable all the time and afraid of being alone in a house with a one week old newborn also didn't sit right with me.

So I'd pretty much already made the decision not to press the issue and to let nature take its course, but it was still in my head. The fact that the doctor is the one who brought up induction as a possibility was a relief. My immediate answer to her was, "I would be fine with it." Scott agreed.

After that? Everything was a bit of a blur. My doctor suggested we come in for it first thing next week. Scott wigged out a little bit and suggested the end of the week instead. We compromised on checking into the hospital late Wednesday night, which means that in all likelihood, I will be induced on my original due date, Sept. 24th.

So there you have it! All of a sudden, the game has changed -- I know for a fact that even if I don't go into labor naturally within the next few days, I will still be greeting my daughter in less than a week.

In future entries, I'll write a little bit about what the induction process involves, because I find it very interesting. In the meantime, I feel like a little kid 5 days before Christmas -- who has just been told that you never know, Christmas could always come early.