Summer (spring?) vacation is here and I'm very happy to be just teaching a 6-week spring session. Monday for 3 hours, Wednesday for 3 hours, and the week is through. This is pretty good when you're in your 8th month of pregnancy. A good friend I've known since I was 13 or so is coming to visit tomorrow and staying for 5 days and that should be fun too.
Anyway, the two newsy things are that Liftoff Cat has officially dropped out of remission and her lymphoma has gotten bad again. We started a new type of chemo last Thursday to try to get a second remission going, and we're in the watch-and-wait phase. She has good moments and bad moments and this means I have happy days and totally-depressed-and-sleep-deprived days because I really, really want her to stick around. I love her so and I've had her for 14 years. So fingers crossed.
The other thing is that at my OB-Gyn appointment last week I learned that the doc thinks that Liftoff Boy was already at 5 1/2 pounds. This is with 7-8 weeks to go! She thinks if he keeps growing the way he has been ("good nutrition" is what she blames it on, hmmm...) that I'll end up with an 11 pounder at 40 weeks. She tested the waters on inducing me a week or two early and in a way that sounds good because Mom would be able to schedule her visit to coincide with the induction (thought: find out if there are hotels near the hospital). On the other hand, my doc also seemed to be warning me about c-section as a possibility and I've been reading about how women who are older than 35, overweight, and induced (each of these individually) are all more likely to need a c-section. If I'm going to need a c-section anyway, I would much rather just do it than go into a pitocin-induced labor and spend hours waiting for my cervix to ripen. Apparently induced contractions are more painful anyway.
So, this puts me into the "elective cesarean" category and apparently makes me a bad person. But even if I just have a 50% shot at needing a c-section, I'd much rather do that when everything's mellow than to get into a situation where there's fetal distress, meconium, and a growing urgent need to get the baby out. I'm reading a lot about vaginal vs. cesarean recovery, pros and cons, etc. and one thing that always comes up is how hard it is to recover from abdominal surgery. Well, I had an emergency appendectomy and I can remember the 8 days in the hospital recovering from surgery very well. I remember the pain of even taking deep breaths (and laughing was agony for a couple of days), but I also remember that it was doable. This is what I think I'm going to do (unless the ultrasound says Liftoff Boy is, I don't know, only 4 1/2 pounds next week or 5) - just schedule the cesarean and skip all the preliminaries. But I can hear the voices of women who take labor and birth very spiritually all telling me that I'll be missing out, that I'm being selfish, that I should at least TRY to deliver vaginally. But since I'd already be a loser for getting an epidural, I don't think I'll ever please them. Sigh.
I actually dreamed last night that I had LB delivered by c-section then was made to feel bad so they had to put him back in so I could deliver vaginally! Yeesh.
3 comments:
Unsolicited advice from your cousin: do what you need to do. Granted, I haven't birthed a baby, but I was a birth partner for an older mom, and believe me, there's nothing fun or spiritual about an emergency c-section. IMHO, this is supposed to be about getting a healthy baby into the world, and if it's also a step toward self-actualization for you, that's just a bonus, right?
I know c-sections aren't ideal, and that lots of women are unnecessarily railroaded into having them, but if you think you need one, have one. I think you're being smart. That's probably why you have a Ph.D. ;-)
Just my two cents.
I'll do what I think is smart, but I'll agonize for a long while first. That's how I function. Sigh.
Sadly, me, too. Must run in the family.
Post a Comment