Physically, I'm terribly uncomfortable. Everything is sore and achy, it's hard to get up from any position, and he's big enough at this point that his movements, when he's really active, often get me feeling seasick like waves going on in my stomach.
What life has come to...Mark and Adie help tie my shoes:
We have had two non-stress tests now and one biophysical profile. For the non-stress tests, while hooked up to the EFM, in a 15-minute period, they like to see at least 3-5 good movements/spikes in heartrate. In each of the ones we've had done, he's moved 10+ times. For the biophysical profile, they give a max of 2 points in 4 different categories: tone movement (fingers, toes, etc.), growth movement (general movement-making sure it's not just a twitch, but good strong movements), breathing motions, and size of the pockets of amniotic fluid. Out of 8 points possible, he got 8 points. So...in the big scheme of things, we have so, so much to be grateful for and really can't complain. The things that matter, are perfect. He's healthy and doing fine...he's just taking his time!
Another hard part of this has been trying to explain our stance on it all to everyone. Nowadays, it's rare to find a woman that will go to 42 weeks. Many women are even induced at 39 weeks or for sure within their 40th weeks because at that point they're "overdue". Mark actually found in his research that the World Health Organization doesn't even consider a woman overdue until 42 weeks. Even Ina Mae Gaskin was pushing to have the due date changed to the 42 week-mark rather than 40. We've heard all over the place "so do you have a date scheduled yet?", and "aren't they going to induce?". Well...yes, they could induce, but why!? Me being uncomfortable and over being pregnant and us being ready to meet our son doesn't seem like good enough reason to me. Believe me- I am waaaaaaaay over being pregnant and so emotionally exhausted from the roller coaster of this last couple weeks, but, there is absolutely no medically necessary reason to induce at this point. He's clearly not ready or he'd be here!
Along with hearing about induction from everyone, we've been hearing about all of the old wives tales of things to try to naturally induce. Knowing that none of them really work unless your body is ready anyway, we've tried about everything you can think of. Over the course of 3 days, we walked about 8 miles, Mark got the pilates ball blown up and I've bounced for a total of probably 5 hours, I've been taking evening primrose oil capsules, we've done spicy food, many, many squats, two trips to the chiropractor, all among a few other things... I even stumbled on a recipe online that was sworn by. There is a restaurant in Georgia who serves an Eggplant Parmesan dish. A few women had mentioned going into labor after eating it there and now, the restaurant has an entire wall devoted to pictures of babies who they call "the eggplant babies"- all babies that have been born within 48 hours of eating the dish. They've even been featured on ABC. Apparently it's something with the combination of spices from what we've read- the basil, oregano and parsley. Now if you eat the meal at the restaurant and don't have your baby within the 48 hours, you get a gift certificate to come back for another meal. So...since the restaurant posted their recipe, and has had so much success with it, we figured we might as well give it a shot, and I loaded it with spices!!! Not knowing if we even liked eggplant, we gave it a go and wow was this a time-consuming and expensive meal. But...it was actually delicious! However, 48 hours later we still had no baby, I was just left with oil burns all over my left arm from splattering the oil while I was cooking!
Today I've been having contractions all day long, but like every other time, I'm skeptical to get my hopes up because I have good reason to believe that I'll go to sleep and everything will stop and I'll wake up back to normal yet again. We wondered if earlier today some of my water may have leaked...but not sure. We are really hoping and praying that this little guy will come on his own so that we don't have to make any hard decisions as far as induction is concerned. Hopefully all goes well tomorrow...
