A day with the doctors
This morning, we had another appointment with the doctor. His examination showed that Laura’s pregnancy had progressed a little more since last week, and she and the baby are both healthy. Our options at this point were basically: 1) wait another week and see if labor starts on its own, 2) give it a push and induce, or 3) since the doctor believes Anne to be a bigger than average baby, jump to a planned C-section (though this was not recommended). Due mostly to Laura’s increasing discomfort, we decided to schedule an induction.
We spent the afternoon between our usual clinic and and the birthing center. The doctor wanted to see an ultrasound and a non-stress test for further confirmation of mother and baby’s health. After our kitten surprise earlier this year, we were pleased when the ultrasound confirmed again that our baby is indeed a little girl. The non-stress test was performed at the birthing center. They hooked Laura up to a fetal heart rate monitor to make sure that Anne’s heart rate didn’t slow down during contractions. They usually establish a baseline for the baby’s heart rate by measuring her at rest, but Anne was so active that they weren’t able to do that in the 30 minutes we waited there. The doctor reviewed the results as we waited, though, and everything looked good.
Tomorrow, we’ll check in to the birthing center at 4:00 P.M. There, they’ll administer a preparation agent to Laura and monitor her overnight. On Wednesday morning, they’ll begin the Petocin drip which should bring on contractions and start labor. If all goes according to plan, we should have our little girl for Christmas.
I also signed up for Twitter today. With their service and a plugin for the blog, I can send updates from my cell phone and have them appear in the new “Nathan is…” box in the sidebar. I have no idea whether or not I’ll actually get much use out of this, but it’s a nifty feature, so I enabled it.
