Our daughter has a new birth date

Thank you, lovely ladies, for all of your kind words and suggestions on our current situation. I continue to do everything thing that I can to encourage our little one to move, though it doesn’t seem to be doing a whole lot. She does seem to have a bigger range of motion now than she did before, so I suppose it’s possible that she could still turn, but I can tell that she is getting even more cramped in there than before. Even so, I continue on with the chiropractic, acupuncture, reiki, swimming, crawling, inversions, etc, while at the same time bringing myself to terms with the fact that she will likely be born via c-section.

And speaking of c-sections, at my appointment last week, we discussed with one of the doctors exactly why they schedule breech sections for 39 weeks. He gave me some pretty weak answers, answers that definitely did not convince me of any medical need for her to be born early. I tried to push for a later date, but he wasn’t really interested in talking about it with me. He suggested that I go ahead and schedule my pre-op with the doctor who would be delivering her (if we went with the scheduled Feb 11th section), and we could talk it out with her.

So that’s what we did yesterday. We met with her and I asked her what the harm in waiting to go into labor naturally would be. She provided the same list of reasons as the previous doctor, again, reasons that I don’t feel carry a whole lot of weight. So I (tearfully) explained to her that this is likely going to be the only baby that I carry and have an opportunity to birth myself and I wanted to experience as much of a vaginal birthing process as I could. She flat out asked me why, as if I was a crazy woman for wanting to experience labor and contractions. I explained that for all we’d been through to get to this point, I wanted as much of the whole package as possible. I may seem like a lunatic for wanting to experience the pain of labor, but it’s still something that I looked forward to long before we even tried to get pregnant. And I know that she will probably never understand my position, but that’s how I feel and I’m entitled to my opinion.

My waterworks did little to change her mind. So I asked her that what happens if we agree to disagree on this point? Her response was that we should probably talk about transfer of care. My jaw dropped in disbelief. I questioned her, asking that just because I didn’t want to be sectioned at 39 weeks they were going to drop me just like that? She said “well, I don’t know of any OB’s in the area that will even let you attempt a vaginal breech birth.”

Whoa. Hold up. I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in a vaginal breech birth. None. I know it can be done perfectly safely, and is done routinely in countries all over the world with better success rates than one would ever imagine, but that’s just not something that I personally am interested in. Not at all. And I told her as much. I told her that all I want to do is be able to experience a tiny bit of labor.

She questioned me as to where we would draw the line as to how much labor was enough? She didn’t want me showing up at the hospital at 8cm dilated and have me “crash and need an emergency c-section.” I told her that I’m not at all interested in laboring with this baby for any sustained period of time, I just want to experience a little bit of it. In my mind, I was thinking that we’d wait until I knew that I was in labor, and then head to the hospital. I have absolutely no intentions of trying “cheat the system” by showing up dilated with a breech baby. I just want a taste.

So we compromised. She agreed to schedule the section for 40 weeks and I agreed that I would not eat or drink anything if I were to spontaneously go into labor before that point. I am to call them after contractions are established at 5/1/1 and then we would go in for the section. I will also be checked at each appointment to make sure that I’m not dilating to an unreasonable level, which would put me at an increased risk for a cord prolapsed. Neither the baby’s head nor butt is anywhere near my pelvis, so my cervix is still long and closed and I don’t really see that changing at all since she seems pretty comfortable right where she is.

To be honest, I really don’t have much faith that I will go into labor on my own prior to 40 weeks, so the scheduled section seems to be the most likely scenario. I just wasn’t comfortable with the idea of my daughter being born early with very little medical indication for her to be so. Obviously we are quite certain of the date that she was conceived, so we know that even if she were born at 39 weeks she should be in good health, but a huge part of me still wants to give her as much time to choose her own birth date as possible. Even one more week was a major victory for me. Plus, I’m just not ready to be done being pregnant yet.

So that’s where we’re at. Our daughter will be born no later than February 18th, her exact due date. We are so excited to meet her!

My daughter has a birth date

It is with a very disappointed heart that I can announce our daughter will be born on February 11th, 2010.

Despite all of my efforts to encourage her to turn, she is having none of it. The four times a week chiro appointments, the weekly acupuncture, the swimming, the moxabustion, the crawling around on the floor…none of it worked.

Even so, I felt confident that all of those things would have at least had made it easier for her to turn today with the assistance of a doctor during an external version. As it turns out, she did not budge an inch.

The version was not comfortable. In fact, it was a lot more uncomfortable than I ever imagined it would be. I knew going into it that it wouldn’t be comfortable, but I really felt that she was ready to turn and might do so with minimal pressure and discomfort. I was wrong.

I was hesitant to even have the version done in the first place. The success rates weren’t that impressive and I knew that with the way she way situated (frank breech, with her feet up by her ears) the chances of success were even lower than with a complete breech. The low success rates are why I tried all of the alternative options first, hoping that she would turn prior to this morning’s version. I weighed the pros and cons of the version and decided that if I didn’t try everything that I could to have a vaginal birth that I would definitely regret it in the long run, so we went ahead with the version.

Having been through it, I can say that no part of me regrets doing it. I know that our daughter was safe since they were monitoring her the whole time and she didn’t even seem to notice what was going on. For me the physical discomfort was entirely temporary. The long lasting pain comes from knowing that I will not have the birth that I had always envisioned.

It seems ridiculous to say, but I’ve had a vision of what I wanted my birth experience to be like since long before we started trying to get pregnant. I can assure you that it absolutely did not include a c-section. Of course there was always the chance that a c-section might be necessary in the long run, but I always envisioned my husband and I hunkered down at our house in the early hours of labor timing contractions. I imagined us driving to the hospital while I tried to cope with the pain of the contractions. I imagined laboring and giving birth in one of our hospital’s fantastic birthing suites. I never once imagined a scheduled c-section.

I am completely heartbroken that I will never get to experience these things that I was so looking forward to. After the initial discomfort of the pressure on my belly, I could feel the tears begin to fall down the side of my cheeks and into my ears. A small part of it was due to the pain of the procedure, but mostly it was because I could tell that she just wasn’t going to move. The tears continued to fall long after the doctor stopped trying to turn her. He kept asking if I was OK and I kept mumbling yes, which I don’t think he believed until I told him that I actually felt fine physically, I was just extremely disappointed.

My OB’s office likes to schedule breech births at 39 weeks, so that was the recommendation after it was apparent that the version was not successful. As much as I do not want to have a scheduled c-section, I didn’t have the emotional energy to fight the recommendation. We went ahead and scheduled it, and that was that. The nurse was very sweet telling me that they will definitely do an u/s before the c-section to make sure that she is still breech, and reminded me that some babies do turn prior to the c-section.

I don’t really believe that our daughter will turn, nor do I think I will spontaneously go into labor before 39 weeks and I feel like I’ve been robbed of something that I really looked forward to experiencing. I am not at all excited about having surgery in order to give birth to our baby. I am not looking forward to recovering from a c-section during a time that I want to be able to be there 100% for our daughter. I want to be able to hold and cuddle our daughter after she is born. I want to be able to pick her up when I want to and not have to ask someone to get her and hand her to me. I want to be able to drive soon after giving birth. I want my baby (and me) to benefit from the hormones released during the birthing process. I don’t want to spend weeks receovering from major abdominal surgery. I want to have the birth experience that I always expected to have.

I feel awful complaining about this as I feel I’ve already been exponentially blessed by even being able to experience pregnancy in the first place. For a long time I honestly thought that I would never find myself in this position. I feel greedy asking for and desiring a normal vaginal birth, but it’s what I want.

In the end, I know that I’ve got to keep my eyes on the prize, and that’s a healthy daughter at the end of all of this. She is the greatest reward and though I am definitely disappointed today, I have no doubt that her arrival will completely erase any of the sadness that I feel today.