Friday, March 05, 2010

We rode the labor induction roller coaster... and then we went to Ikea

Somehow I kept my wits about me after my due date (Sunday Feb. 28) came and went... but on Wednesday afternoon my doctor ruined everything.

She told me I was in pre-labor! I had no idea.

Apparently I was having regular contractions that I couldn't even feel, which they detected when they had me all hooked up to make sure the baby isn't getting stressed out by her own insistence on continued lodging in the Hotel J-funk (as I suspected, no baby stress). They got very excited and then informed me I was also 1 cm dilated, and 70% effaced, and according to the doctor the baby is so low she is about to fall out.

We rushed home to wrap everything up and get ready to go to the hospital. The doctor told me to keep moving, so I did all the laundry, the dishes, went for a walk, checked over our hospital bags, and then started sorting through books and cleaning out some shelves. I was hoping maybe doing some nesting would trigger labor (rather than the other way around). But by Wednesday night it was clearly not happening so I gave up to get some sleep. Thursday morning we leaped out of bed with renewed motivation and doubled our efforts - we tried EVERYTHING in the book and even went to Ikea in the afternoon, which, as we all know, is the ultimate in labor-inducing stimulation - if that didn't work, nothing would.

Unfortunately, none of it worked.

But, I did find a really stellar outdoor rocking chair for our patio, and a totally rockin' alligator bath mat at Ikea.

Thursday night I fell into bed at 8:30 pm completely wiped out from the day's adventures. Baby anticipation is exhausting. Since I still can't feel those contractions, and don't feel any different otherwise, I can't help but blame the doctor a little bit. If it weren't for her, we would have had a pretty normal week - much easier on the psyche. Today I am taking a new approach: find my post due-date zen again, try to get some work done (or put together that rocking chair), take it easy, and assume the baby is not coming unless I hear otherwise. And maybe I'll have some curry again for dinner.

2 comments:

arial said...

Regular contractions that you can't even feel. Bah! You're totally going to be one of those women I hate who has a 2 hour labor and loves every minute of it.

Uncle KT said...

Just think, if your Doc hadn't gotten you all wound up you may not have gotten the rocking chair (which looks awesome) or the bath mat. Love the bath mat. I think you should quickly start people betting on when the baby will come out (if you haven't already)...

Time to take a break

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