Hellobee

I’m a huge planner and slightly type A when it comes to scheduling and making plans, so the end of a pregnancy when you’re waiting for the baby to arrive is like torture to me. In the last few weeks before my due date with Wagon Jr., I gained a good amount of my extra baby weight because the only thing that made me feel relatively better was to go out and eat delicious food, hoping each extravagant meal would be the last one to push me into labor. At every weekly appointment I would pray for some sort of progress, but my cervix stayed tightly shut all the way until my last appointment before my due date, just 3 days before I went into labor and gave birth. I never saw any kind of discharge, mucous plug, or bloody show at all, and my water never broke on its own.

This time around, planning has been a huge logistical nightmare because we had to put caregivers into place for Wagon Jr. for whenever we went to the hospital. We don’t have any family nearby, but luckily we have a great friend who lives right down the street that loves to babysit Wagon Jr., so we got her up to speed on bedtime routine, dropping off and picking up at daycare, installing a carseat into her car, etc. The time period for which she’d have to be “on call” came and went, and my parents arrived from out of town when I was 37 weeks along.

My OBGYN won’t let me go past 39 weeks due to my gestational diabetes, so even though my original due date was July 24th (originally July 26th but adjusted after recent ultrasounds), I would have a scheduled induction by July 17th if I didn’t have the baby by then.

At my weekly appointment last Monday (July 2nd), my OBGYN informed me that I was 3 cm dilated! I was in total shock since I was not dilated at all with my first pregnancy. I knew this didn’t necessarily mean I would go into labor any time soon (many moms, especially non-first time moms, can be dilated for weeks before baby arrives), but I went into baby watch immediately. I also began to lose my mucous plug over the next week and a half, bit by bit. Every time I lost a big piece, I’d be super crampy and uncomfortable. I also had Braxton Hicks contractions each night, just like with my first pregnancy. So every single day, I’d be convinced that this was it, and I’d put plans into place. But of course, it was never it.

At my next weekly appointment this past Monday (July 9th), my doctor checked me and notified me that I was almost 4 cm dilated at that point, and as she had been for a long time, baby was head down and very low. Since the baby measured 7.5 lbs at my last appointment, I was dilating, and I was so uncomfortable, she told me to just show up at the hospital that Wednesday to get induced. At my practice, doctors are at the hospital one day a week, and Wednesday was my doctor’s day.

I was thrilled to know my baby’s future birthday, and everything would work out perfectly logistically: my parents would both be at my house, along with my dad’s car to bring Wagon Jr. to and from daycare on the days he was scheduled, and my MIL was coming for a visit that weekend so she could help as well. Everything was looking perfect, especially the date the baby would be born: 7/11!  I was also so excited that my doctor would be the one to deliver Lil Miss Wagon. A different doctor from the practice delivered Wagon Jr. since he was born on a Thursday.

We arrived at the hospital on Wednesday morning, got checked (still almost 4 cm dilated) and my doctor informed us that the hospital was incredibly busy and there were zero beds in labor and delivery for elective procedures. In fact, there were 4 scheduled inductions (one of them waiting for my doctor as well) waiting at the same time as I was. So my doctor asked me to go home and come back around 2pm to check if I had progressed any further and if there was more room at that point.

Even though Wagon Sr. and I were disappointed, we decided to do our part in getting things moving, as well as take advantage of a last day out together. We went to the mall where we walked around, ran some errands, and had a lovely lunch together. We walked so much that both Wagon Sr.’s and my feet were hurting! By the time we were driving back to the hospital, I was feeling very uncomfortable and crampy.

We got there and things looked like they had gotten even worse: there weren’t even any triage beds available. After a few more hours of waiting, I was finally checked again, notified that I hadn’t progressed any since the last check, I wasn’t contracting, and my doctor very apologetically sent me home. She felt awful and I immediately started to cry, but the reality was that there was just no space to get me started with an induction. Her patient who was there for a scheduled induction for medical reasons was still waiting in the waiting room when we left at 5pm (I had first seen her when we arrived at 8:30am). As bad as I felt for myself, I felt really bad for her because I knew she’d have to wait until a bed opened up for her no matter what, since she absolutely had to be induced that day.

I spent the next 24 hours in and out of a really bad funk. I was in a constant emotional spiral from disappointed to angry to bitter to sad to frustrated. Ever since I had found out I was 3 cm dilated a week and a half prior, I had been waiting on pins to go into labor, and when my doctor said she’d induce me on Wednesday, I thought my wait was over. I was able to relax and know that my waiting would come to an end very soon, and put all kinds of perfect plans into place. Now my waiting was beginning all over again, and all my plans had crumbled into dust. All of my plan B’s were worse than the original plan, and each day that I didn’t deliver, plans C, D, E, etc. got even worse for everyone involved.

When I called the next day to schedule my next weekly appointment and my scheduled induction for the following week (at 39 weeks), I was informed that my doctor wouldn’t be on call at all next week. But the good news was that my second favorite doctor was the one on call on Tuesday, so I scheduled my induction with him for Tuesday, 7/17.

Through all of this waiting and anticipation, both Wagon Sr. and I started our maternity and paternity leave early, and both of us missed important work events. Since I’m a contractor, I missed out on a ton of work I could have been paid for immediately, which would have really helped during my unpaid leave. My dad, who had planned to drop my mom off , go back home to work, and rush back when the baby was born, had now missed a ton of work because he decided to stay when he heard the baby would be here by Wednesday. Now he has to head back home and won’t be able to see the baby until a week and a half later, and my mom also has to take care of Wagon Jr. alone while we are at the hospital. My MIL, who’s here for the weekend, will be going home on Sunday and won’t be able to return to visit the new baby until at least a week or two later.

Everyone keeps trying to console me by saying it all has to happen naturally, and that the longer the baby is in my womb the healthier she will be. But the plan was to get her out this past Wednesday because of the discomfort I’m in and the fact that she’s growing so large.

I’m finally in a place where I’ve accepted that the baby is coming next Tuesday, and if she comes earlier, it’s just a bonus. Wagon Jr. and I go out for super long walks every day, which is not easy in this 90 degree heat (we’re running out of air conditioned places to go to where we’re not tempted to spend money!), but I don’t think I’m making any progress at all. I keep waiting to feel a first real, timeable contraction or for my water to break, but the longer I wait, the more I think I will end up being induced on Tuesday as planned. I know that once Lil Miss Wagon is here, I won’t remember any of this and it won’t matter, but here in this moment it’s so painful and torturous.

One very, very bright spot in all of this is that the Hellobee community has been so incredibly supportive and encouraging. I’ve found that I have many nicknames that I TOTALLY love (Wagon, Wags, Waggy… my favorite!), and everyone has stayed on Wagon Watch with me even though I’ve been totally MIA on the boards during my funk. If you are a blog reader and don’t normally wander over to the boards, I encourage you to pop over and read a few threads, and start posting yourself– the community is so incredibly wonderful, helpful, and you will find that you can ask almost anything at any time and get totally honest responses. Check it out now!