Please excuse the Americanism, the house has come over all Oakland, California thanks to the purchase and subsequent over-playing of the latest Seasick Steve album.
Not that I suspect you care about that when there might be baby news in the offing. Well I suppose there is, of sorts, in that monitoring has now begun in earnest. I get ahead of myself though, I will back up to Monday and explain how we arrived at our current location.
Having been chilled to within an inch of my life on Monday morning, I got a call from the lovely midwife I had spoken to last week asking me to come in for some monitoring and so that the registrar could "agree for me to postpone my induction by 24 hours". I did chuckle but I thought I might as well play the game, seeing as how I had expected to have that very conversation on Tuesday morning anyway.
So after lunch, in we trooped to Lister and after a large dose of sitting around in what can only be described as a sweat box, the lovely registrar came to see me about my "specific issue".
That did throw me temporarily but I rallied and ran through all the research I had done and why I wanted to wait longer than 42 weeks before considering an induction. We discussed NICE guidelines, and RCOG guidelines (or rather I discussed them) and in the end we agreed that monitoring it would be until 43 weeks at which point we'd look and see how things were moving along.
Marvellous
Oh and while I was there, how about a baseline trace to be going along with?
Seemed churlish not to, so I spent a very pleasant half hour hooked up watching Alfie get himself all excited, followed by ten minutes of the midwives flapping as the little swine fell soundly asleep and refused to move. Luckily I had a bottle of cold water with me that sorted that little problem out while they weren't looking.
The one big downer on the otherwise very positive afternoon was the attitude of the midwife who had been so positive thus far. Once the resident and I had agreed a plan for monitoring her attitude changed entirely and she had a go first at Keith, and then at me, implying that we were being irresponsible by trusting my body over the miracles of modern induction.
She has even written in my notes both on Monday and today words to the effect that I have to be on Red Alert for any signs of change. Because obviously up to this point I had been using my little internal bongo drum as a mere distraction when stuck in traffic.
Today I had the joy of speaking to another graduate of the Lister charm school when I went for a scan to check the placenta and fluid levels. Her opening gambit was to ask me how far along I was, at which point she said, in all seriousness "so why aren't we just starting you off then??!"
I gritted my teeth and explained that I didn't want to be induced and that I had agreed to be monitored instead ... *blank look* ... so I need you to check the placenta and fluid levels please.
Apparently I am breaking new ground left and right with that place because she had to leave to find out what to do next.
She wasn't finished yet though, not by a long chalk, instead she started by measuring Alfie's head, which apparently was off the scale (as she informed us with extreme glee). She moved on to his tum and declared that I had better hurry up because our little boy was getting close to 9lb!
Were it not for the fact that I was already aware that third trimester scans have a tolerance of 2lb I think I might have broken at that point. In reality, the print out showed that he is just growing on exactly the same curve as he had been previously and both cord and fluid are looking perfect.
So anyway, I sit here this evening bouncing on my birth ball looking forward to the joys of my visit tomorrow. If there were no other motivation, that alone would be more than enough to motivate me to get this baby the hell out.
I do find it profoundly sad, that something as simple as delaying an induction can be met with such vitriol by certain healthcare professionals. It's is almost as if they have taken it as a personal insult which frankly is nothing short of bizarre.
Luckily I have also spoken to that wonderfully respectful registrar (who said it was "nice to meet a lady who knew her mind" which I took as a compliment), a junior midwife today who was SO interested in our plans for the birth, and most of all the community midwives, who I called yesterday to update and who, to my eternal surprise, were totally chilled about our homebirth plans going ahead unchanged.
Now if only Carlsberg did homebirths, maybe everyone would be that positive!!
