Week 41: Pencils down

Okay sweetie pie.  Time's up.

Daddy's beside me under the patchwork quilt while we listen to old music on my laptop and wait for the repercussions of castor oil to trigger your birth.  If it doesn't work tonight then tomorrow night we go in for medical induction.  Dysentery in Ghana isn't my favorite memory from Africa but it was an adventure, so I'm trying intentional gastrointestinal upset as a means of hopefully preventing a balloon catheter followed by an IV of pitocin.  I was really hoping you'd come on your own, but I don't think you want to put your pencil down. 

Whatever isn't done you can finish once you're born, okay?  Come on, sweetie.  Let's do this thing.
-Momma

Week 40: Bubbles by Candlelight (Surrender)

Progress update: as of today, 3cm dilated and 70% effaced, not too much more than two weeks ago.  We postponed induction from Wednesday to Thursday night so long as the ultrasound on Wednesday is not too dire.  A week ago Bubble was estimated to weigh 9.6lbs so even I agree that waiting much past the 41st week may be a mistake.  Thank you for closing your eyes and asking Bubble to make it on her own.  I think she hears us.  I also think dancing naked in the moonlight and taking hot baths are the two most amusing non-unpleasant induction techniques I've seen recommended that I am capable of doing without Brian's help.  Last night I took a bath by candlelight (as I do every night) and was blowing bubbles from a bubble wand (as I do whenever I have a wave) when I realized very few people have seen how gorgeous bubbles by candlelight are, so I got out of the bathtub, dried off, and set up the camera on the toilet seat.  With my left hand I held the bubble wand to my lips and with my right I clicked the camera; here's what I got.  The candle is the last of my Mom's candles and it started out a foot high and has seen me through many baths, so it seemed appropriate to ensconce it in art.

Bubble: Today when I got to the center of the labyrinth after the blood test at the hospital the request in my mind surprised me; instead of the "Please let this baby come to me soon" that I'd planned on, the prayer that formed instead was "Please give me the strength to wait for my child."  All of my life I have navigated difficulties by taking initiative, by thinking and planning and strategically manipulating variables -- so this last month of discomfort and frustration I have stepped up to bat with everything I am, my heart and nerve and sinew, but the strategies that have defined me elsewhere have left me with nothing but compounded discomfort and frustration.  I have tried enough induction techniques to have convinced myself utterly that no action on my part can hasten your arrival; I have dealt with discomfort by hours of rigorous self-hypnosis and relaxation practice, but still the deep strong tenderness that grips me in waves can make me cry out.

I surrender.  Your birth will be your birth, and I am waiting as long as I can so you have the chance to do it your way.  This is very difficult to do because I know that at any moment I can end the constant tension and suspense by asking for an induction, to which they will agree because you are so big that if I saw a doctor instead of midwives I would likely have been pressured to induce you before now.  It is difficult to wait for you when every instant is stressful, tiring, and full of aching, and when I know my decision not to end this may be in vain anyway, since it's only a matter of days before I have to induce no matter what.

Bubble, I love you, and this is my first act of respect for you as the person you want to be: you have the most time I can safely give you to come on your own.  But please help me have the strength to keep waiting.  Every time I feel you move inside me I am reminded how precious it is to share my body with you.  I am deeply honored you have come to me, but until I look into your eyes I will not feel safe and certain that you are mine.

What practice labor feels like

In a word? Trippy.  Like there is no boundary between the perception of and the generation of others' emotion, like external stimuli come into and through my head, like I have no skin.  I didn't expect that.

In several words?  Exciting, weird, and elephantishly uncomfortable.  Imagine how a balloon feels when it's about to burst, then turn it from thin light plastic into a heavy unweildy metal tank balloon -- that's late 3rd-trimester pregnancy, uncomfortable twice constantly.  But practice labor is very different, so at first -- the first two nights in which I spent more than 5 hours blowing bubbles every time my abdomen turned into a hard-packed basketball -- the excitement of the new sensations was welcome.  Practice contractions are about as comfortable as they seem like they would be, possibly slightly less so, but I thought intense sensations meant I was getting somewhere, and it was a relief from the monotonous aching pissiness.

Brian was timing the waves every time he saw me blowing bubbles from the Bubble shower party favor around my neck, and when he said "Top of the minute, 4 minutes, consistent," my internal response was "Oh f#$%!!" The second night this happened for more than 4 hours straight, we called doula Stephanie who drove down from Ft. Collins to spend the night and escort us into the birthing center as planned.  Everything looked like it was really happening.

It wasn't.  Whew.  I got to rest again.  And now I've replaced raspberry tea (which stimulates uterine contractions) with occasional sips of Aaron Hart's delicious hard cider, since an old hippy antidote for preterm labor is alcohol.  It won't stop Bubble from coming when she's ready, apparently, but it will stop me spending hours in an intensely vulnerable mental and physical state, going through labor that isn't really labor.  Bubble's squirming around in my distended tummy as I type, so all is well -- another gorgeous Colorado day -- and one morning closer to looking into her eyes.

Week 38: False alarm

Finn's Aunt Cheryl called it: Keep talking about Bubble coming early, and you'll jinx it.  Since Sunday night, Finn had been having fairly regular waves for several hours at a time, and they were getting more intense.  Last night our doula, Stephanie, came down from Ft. Collins and spent the night with us just in case.  Then we moved Finn's midwife appointment from Thursday to today so we could talk to them.  The consensus: it's all practice labor, and she's probably got at least another week to go.

Finn is understandably frustrated by all this, but as the doula and the midwife told her, Bubble is going to come on her schedule, and there's nothing anyone can do to speed it up.  So the only thing to do is wait, and that's probably the hardest thing for Finn to hear right now.