Waiting for baby, part 4 - the labor tincture

So yesterday we tried a labor tincture as prescribed by my doula and a midwife who was giving me over-the-phone advice. It worked for a few other people, too, so my friend Jenny (and her husband Dave) picked up a bottle for us at the hospital near their house. They were out of it at a few different other places where I had gone to pick it up. It did work, as my contractions got stronger and closer together and remained that way for the rest of the day, however, one of the ingredients in it (Black Cohosh and Blue Cohosh - can't recall which one) can cause high blood pressure, which it did in me. So after I took the tincture (half the dose as I was already having contractions naturally), we went over to the hospital to have a Non-Stress Test done. The baby hadn't been moving as much yesterday morning as it had been normally, so just to settle my nerves, we went over there. The baby was fine, by the way, just asleep, but my blood pressure was a bit high. So the nurses took it and took it and took it again until it went to a normal level and then told the doctor I was there, which was so nice of them. They knew that I didn't want to be induced and that Dr. Evil would likely force me to if my blood pressure was a teeny bit high (and it was only a teeny bit high). However, I was warned not to take more of the tincture lest this happen again to me. It was worth a try, as was everything we tried. Even if it did taste like the bottom of a hippie's shoe.

Waiting for baby, part 3

So, some background:

On 1/17, four days before our due date, we went to our midwife appointment and found out that she is going out of town for a few weeks the day after our due date. We were shocked for a number of reasons.

One: we asked her long before if she was planning on traveling in late January/early February and she said no. In fact, she added that she rarely takes vacations and had just gotten back from her first vacation in 6 yrs.

Two: The reason she is leaving was to help her daughter give birth who has the same due date as ours.

Three: She waited until 4 DAYS before our due date to tell us this.

Her backup is the Ob-Gyn that she shares a practice with. A woman we shall call "Dr. Linda Teagle, Evil OB". I will shorten it to Dr. Evil for time saving purposes. It is too late for us to change to a different midwife or doctor (we tried) as they will not take new O-B patients who are past 39 weeks (we are). So we basically are stuck. Which SUCKS. Had we known earlier what we know now, we would have set up meetings with another medical group and hospital.

However, we decided that we were stuck so we'd make lemonade out of lemons. We met with Dr. Evil and from the first meeting, she pushed induction on us as if her life depended on it (ours or the baby's didn't). She used the following scare tactics to try and get us to comply:

1) Stillbirth rates are "much higher" after week 39. When pressed to give us percentages at weeks 38 compared to weeks 39 and 40, she couldn't come up with any. Nate said "because if the regular rate is 0.001% and it goes up to 0.002%, that's an increase of 100% but it's still a very low risk". She scoffed and said "it's much higher than 0.002%, but I don't know what the actual percentages are". I would think that if you were going to spout off such a horrible word as "stillbirth" to parents awaiting their first child, especially those who waited 5 years and endured IVF to get pregnant, you might want to have your facts together first.

2) The baby or I might have blood pressure problems. True, we might. But we didn't. So why bring it up?

3) The placenta is calcifying. This is normal. She acted like it was a sign that the placenta was already useless and not supporting the baby. There were very small calcifications in the outlying areas of the placenta, but that doesn't mean that the placenta is not healthy. It's just showing it's age which is normal.

4) The baby wasn't kicking as much as it was "supposed to". Granted, she did this test in the morning, and the baby's sleep cycles were always quieter in the morning than at night. I was keeping logs of kick counts and the night before, the baby had over 20 kicks in less than 5 minutes (usually it takes an hour to get that many). So I'd say that the baby was sleeping and she would imply that "maybe something else was wrong". Since babies naturally have their sleep cycles reversed from ours, why would she assume something else was wrong when all indications were that the pregnancy was still perfectly healthy?

5) The baby is now too big for me to birth it vaginally. She quoted twice that our baby was "over 8 pounds". This did scare me until I talked to my doula, who assured us that they are almost always wrong, and considering how many scare tactics she was pulling out, we chalked this one up to another one. People give birth vaginally to 8 pound babies all the time. It wasn't like it was surely 11 pounds or something. For Pete's sake. (Update: the baby weighed 6 lbs, 14 oz at birth).

6) She kept quoting over and over: "All I want is a healthy baby and a healthy mom", to which we replied "We agree". Just because I want to wait until 42 weeks to induce (or induce if a health problem arose), doesn't mean that I don't want the same thing. She would use that line for everything - including suggesting a C-Section! Sorry. I am not as gullible as she had hoped.

There were more scare tactics, but I have forgotten the rest.

At any rate, we decided that in order to avoid any induction at 42 weeks, we'd try as many natural remedies as possible, which all have worked to efface my cervix 100%. Unfortunately, the dilating isn't happening. Which Dr. Evil is all too happy to mention each visit. She insists on doing exams even though I haven't shown any signs of dilation between visits. Annoying.

So, here is another video of us in labor (for the millionth time I think) but the contractions were much stronger this night. Unfortunately, they went away by the next day. So the waiting continues...

Our Attempts to Meet Baby Erlin

Well it's the end of the day on 1/23/11 and that means that Baby Erlin is 2 days past its due date. I know, I know. Due dates are merely estimates and only 4-5% of births actually happen on a due date, but I was at least hoping that something more would be happening by now. I mean, 40 weeks is a long time to be cooped up in there. I would think the baby would want some actual air at some point. But I've done my best to make it a nice, comfortable environment. Maybe I made it too comfy...

I have been having some real contractions but they are inconsistent at this point and irregular, so my body is just getting primed for the real deal I guess.

Anyway, here are some videos of us this weekend as we tried to coax the start of labor with all sorts of homeopathic methods (Castor Oil not ingested, though - merely rubbed into the belly, which is not easy to do since it has the consistency of molasses! Who knew?).

P.S. I make mention in the second video that we ate someplace embarrassing but I say that we'll say where later. I forgot to video us eating Cinnabon for dessert later that evening (Nate's first ever Cinnabon). We had dinner at the food court in the mall and got Cinnabon to go for later. We were trying to walk around as much as possible, and it had gotten cold, so we walked around the mall. We are still ashamed of our food choices that evening. :)