Part 2
Part 3
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It was the Fourth of July, and we were four days
overdue. Daniel’s parents were staying
with us, to be home with Hollie when Daniel and I went off to the
hospital when the time came. Daniel’s
brother and his family had driven up from Portland for the long weekend, hoping
to see Baby, though they had to go back the next morning and would miss her by
just a few hours (so they ended up driving back up again the next weekend).
I got a phone call that afternoon from my OB. He had been out of town the entire previous
week, so he was just calling to check up on me (isn’t that awesome?). One of us, I don’t remember who, brought up
induction. He understood how I felt
about it, but I also understood the risks of going too far overdue and to be
honest, I was losing patience and was just really-really ready to be done being
pregnant. I asked what options we had
other than Pitocin, and he kind of chuckled at me changing my mind about it
(induction), but he said (I’m paraphrasing), "Please realize- Pitocin is my last
resort. We will try everything else
first. It’s obvious that you had a bad
experience with it last time, and frankly I don’t understand why they started you off with it."
So, without hesitation I agreed to go in to the hospital the
next morning for a “gentle” induction.
The plan was to first see if I was dilated enough for him to strip my
membranes*, and if not, we would try a misoprostol tablet. We were really excited to know we’d have our
baby soon, and I was really excited to have the less aggressive induction and
see if and how my labor would start. I
was a little disappointed that we weren’t going to have the wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-with-contractions experience, or the dropped-off-at-the-hospital-entrance-while-Daniel-parks-the-car experience, that I had been hoping for,
but I was beginning to see that going overdue is just normal for me (turns out
it’s genetic - my mom went over a week overdue with all three of her
pregnancies!). I can accept that, especially knowing now (spoiler alert…) that I can have a [mostly] natural birth anyway,
and have a great experience while I’m at it.
*By the way, if you don’t know what that means, Google it at your own
risk.
Later that afternoon, we were preparing our big Fourth of July lunch and
realized we didn’t have any matches to start our little grill we had purchased
for the occasion. Daniel and I left the
crowd at home and took a long walk to the grocery store. We figured it would be the last opportunity
we would have to be alone together for quite a while! At the store, we rented a movie, True Grit,
to watch the next day at the hospital if we got a chance. We were also surprised to see a book called “McElligot’s
Pool”, a classic Dr. Seuss book that we thought was out of print. My dad used to read it to me when I was a
kid, from the copy he got when he was
a kid, and he recently gave me it to me for Hollie. We read it to her a lot, and she loves it,
but we don’t let her handle it because it’s about to fall apart. In fact, we had left it in Wichita because we
didn’t want to risk damaging it in the move.
We bought that copy in the store, and saw it as a good sign for the next
day. It was so cool to bring it home for
Hollie that evening.
After we got back, I remember feeling that I was "allowed" to relax at that point. I had been having this awful feeling that there is some magical secret thing women are "supposed" to do to start labor and I wasn't doing it. I know it's silly. As a result though, I had been walking quite a bit for the last week or so, feeling like if I wasn't walking or generally staying active then I wasn't doing anything to get my labor started. This is a glimpse into the mind of an irrational overdue pregnant woman. It was keeping me very busy. So, having made the decision to induce, and being at peace with it, I finally felt like I could sit back and be lazy for an evening.
It was so tough putting Hollie to bed that night, knowing that we wouldn't see her in the morning. Actually, knowing that we probably wouldn't see her until after the baby was born! For once, we were the ones not wanting to turn off the lights.
However, I think Daniel did sneak into her room the next morning to give her a kiss before we left, even though I was worried that she would wake up. For the record, she didn't, and she slept late that morning.
To be continued...
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