10 Days Late

Wives tales about induction do not work, at least not for us.  We have tried spicy foods, sex, exercise, massage, and acupressure.  The only thing left on the list is caster oil, and I think I'd rather have drugs at the birth center instead.  

It's not that I'm super uncomfortable or can't handle being pregnant anymore.  Far from it actually.  I'm happy to let TBD cook in there a bit longer if that's what it needs.  However, the doctors are very worried that TBD will become stressed due to the extra time in my belly, so they are super trigger happy about induction at this stage in pregnancy.  They monitor us every 2ish days and if anything looks worrisome in any way, they start to panic and want to induce.  

So far, TBD and I have been fairly lucky with each monitoring session.  The fetal heartbeat has been nice and dynamic without too many significant drops.  The amniotic fluid levels have been within the normal range.  And, my blood pressure has been normal.  We did have one minor blip in the monitoring this last Tuesday where the measured amniotic fluid levels decreased by about half (12cm down to 6.5cm).  Although 6.5cm is still in the normal range, it caused a bit of a panic for my doctor, so she made me go in for a repeat test the next day.  Suffice it to say that nothing was wrong.  The next day, the levels measured at 7.2cm and I was deemed good to go until the next monitoring session.

After reading up on these different tests, we've become fairly frustrated with them.  

Test #1 is the Non-Stress Test (NST).  This is the test that monitors the baby's heart rate and my uterine pressure at the same time for about 20 minutes.  The doctors like to see a certain amount of "accelerations" of the heartbeat in that time before they are comfortable saying that the baby is not under stress.  One problem with this test is that the baby doesn't know that it's being monitored and has a tendency to go to sleep during the test.  Once it goes to sleep, the number of "accelerations" of the heart rate decrease significantly.  Another problem is that if the baby is not sleeping, it is moving around and can easily get away from the monitors, making it hard to get a full 20 minute reading.  If either of these things happen, the 20 minute session could be extended for an undetermined about of time until the doctors feel comfortable with the results, or they deem the baby to be under stress.

Test #2 is where they do an ultrasound to measure the amniotic fluid levels.  Todd and I have read up on this one a fair bit because it seems super inaccurate.  One website we found had someone describing it as trying to determine the amount of water in a bathtub when you don't know how deep it is, and have no idea how close the person in the tub is to the surface or bottom.  Basically, there could be pockets of fluid that are below the baby that the doctor's can't see, and therefore, don't get taken into consideration.  Which could be one of the reasons that so many women get told that their amniotic fluid is low.  We also read that women's amniotic fluid levels tend to decrease towards the end of their pregnancy as their bodies and the baby prepare for delivery - all totally normal.

As inaccurate and subjective as it all seems, we are heading back to the birth center today for another round of monitoring before the doctors will let us continue on waiting for TBD to arrive.  We've got our hospital bags packed and will be loading TBD's car seat into the car just in case ;)