Hello World

World, meet Vivian, formerly Azuki Bean. Born today, January 16, 2013, at 2:50 pm (JST). 8 lb 11.5 oz, 20.5″ long. Details of the birth to follow, I expect.

(Bear with me and my relative brevity and my formatting weirdness. It’s phone blogging, here, folks.)

Vivian has already displayed keen finger sucking skills, advanced neck musculature, and of course overwhelming adorableness. She nursed brilliantly – twice from each side! – and passed meconium in a diaper, not during the course of the birth. So (other than the hideous patchwork of stitches that I can’t yet make myself look at), everything was going just peachy.

Then, at around 3.5 hours old, she was whisked away from the byouin to the big hospital. Seems that miss perfect has jaundice and anemia, which aren’t uncommon, but with my negative Rh factor and her indeed inheriting her daddy’s A+ blood, it warrants additional testing that they aren’t equipped for at the byouin.

And, they wouldn’t let me go along. Hubs and my mom did go with her, and I’m spending my evening alone with only my mangled parts and no sweet precious daughter, waiting for updates. Which I shall hastily pass along.

Tomorrow I’ll Be A Mommy

The result of this morning’s appointment is…. drumroll…. appointment at 8:30 tomorrow morning for labor induction!

Yeeeah. Ultimately that’s not how I hoped this would go. As easy as it’s all (mostly) been, I pictured that Baby would come when Baby wanted to come. I’ve got this “induction leads to artificially strong labor and higher odds of additional interventions” idea looming over me and it’s big and scary, even if it doesn’t have to be true. And I really ought to have anticipated it. Or, well, I knew it was a possibility lurking there in the background, but I should have assigned it a higher probability and prepared myself better. I probably should take my blood pressure issues more seriously, too.

I am not entirely sure whether or not induction would have been the outcome no matter how today’s appointment had gone. Not that it went badly – BUT – the blood pressure machine gave a super high misreading: 178/91; I think I would have felt ill if that were accurate. Immediately after, I redid it and got a perfectly okay reading of 123/88, so yes it was totally wrong the first time! I handed both of the “receipts” to the nurse meaning to show that the machine sucks… I tried, but I don’t think I explained myself well enough, as both readings got recorded in my chart. Now the paranoid part of my brain is blaming that one machine error for the induction. I wish I had just folded that first receipt up and tucked it into my pocket. It might be one of those things that bugs me forever.

The logic part of my brain, though, says it’s more likely that when Dr. A said we should induce because of my high blood pressure, she meant it in the chronic sense and not in the today’s-crazy-reading sense. Dr. A’s tendency to not really let me know what to expect beyond when to show up for the next appointment has been frustrating all along. It’s even worse with the language issues, and not being able to get nor give good explanations for things. She told us, though, that under normal circumstances the byouin does induce after 41 weeks, but my high blood pressure makes it risky to go past my due date. Which, as we’ve established, was yesterday.

It’s tempting, then, to be irritated at Japan for my confusion and insecurity right now, but the fact is (according to the Navy doc I saw a few weeks ago), in the States they likely would have induced me a week ago! Therefore the Japan angst is unfounded. I shall now take consolation in that we were allowed to get all-the-way-full-term. Which I do very much appreciate. My uterus/this baby totally had their shot to do this the natural way and instead they were lazy, and it is what it is. And at the end of the (what I expect to be a very long) day, WE’LL HAVE A BABY, so what the hell am I whining about anyway??

(Never the less, I am clinging to this little thread of hope that I’ll go into labor on my own overnight before the appointment. One can dream.)

Psst: final belly photos!

 

Week 40: Due Date

Today is the big day, the due date – and here we are, baby still on the inside. I feel slightly silly, a week and a half after going “This is it!” and, well, being totally wrong. I mean, not that things weren’t going on in legitimate preparation for labor, they just haven’t progressed with the speed I expected.

The contractions are still happening, but they continue to be very irregular, mostly infrequent, and not painful. There is still some mucus but no sign of blood.  The baby has definitely dropped, so no more heartburn and my ribs are feeling much less abused, but in exchange I’m now having hip trouble. Like, stabby sharp debilitating flashes of pain deep in my hip socket several times a day. Baby putting pressure on a nerve, maybe? Whatever that is, it sucks. (It’s only temporary, it’s only temporary…)

Friday’s doctor’s appointment was uneventful. The monitoring went well; her heart rate was great and my BP was okay. She’s estimated at 7.8 lbs. Assuming nothing exciting shows up on the agenda tonight, I’ll visit the byouin again tomorrow morning, and I’ll let you all know how that goes.

39w4d

And Yet More Nothing

I am still at home, and there is still no baby to report. Actually, as of right now / thus far today, the contractions have tapered somewhat. Every so often I’m still feeling one, but mostly either they are so mild that I don’t notice, or they aren’t happening at all anymore. The mucus keeps coming in icky abundance, however (though it has no signs of brown nor pink nor red).

I did go in to see the doctor this morning, per previously scheduled appointment. They plugged us in to the fetal monitors again, and baby’s heart rate was still averaging in the 160s… Slightly above where it’s supposed to be, but the doctor didn’t offer any thoughts about it other than stating that it’s a little high. They took my BP three times during the 30 minute monitoring session: 141/93, 133/80, and 122/73. Which I guess proves that if I lie in a quiet room for a while, it goes down. Gasp!

And… that’s about all that happened. Well, sure, I gave a urine sample and got weighed and had my ankles felt for swelling, and described my nonpainful irregular contractions; but there was no ultrasound (for the first time! out of all the times I’ve been there!) and no cervix check. Surprising, I know. Hubs’ work even let him off this morning to come with me, and then the appointment was anticlimactic and boring. I was halfway prepared to be admitted today, but instead I just scheduled another regular checkup for Friday. I guess Dr. A has no concerns, and there is some likelihood that it will still be greater than four days before Azuki Bean will make her debut.

And that is perfectly fine. The contractions – when I feel them – are really pretty unintrusive, and anyhow we’re just at 39 weeks today, so, y’know, I’ve got other things to do. For now.

Second Verse, Same As The First

Time to report that I have nothing new to report, unfortunately. The just-tightness, not-painful contractions continued pretty much throughout the day, but haven’t developed into anything particularly purposeful. Eventually they’ll get stronger, more regular, and closer together. So far, they’ve done exactly none of those things. There was some mucus overnight and this morning that seemed encouraging, but, yeah – no baby yet. I even survived a trip to the grocery store today without my water breaking in the cereal aisle.

Latent Labor? Maybe?

The doctor’s exam this morning showed my cervix to be 2 cm dilated and quite soft. The doc asked if I had felt any contractions, and I said no – because whenever I say yes, BH ones, she doesn’t count that; and I have been mostly ignoring those for at least six weeks anyway. Then she showed me the printout from the 40 minutes of fetal monitoring, where the humps showed that I had in fact had two contractions during that time. Huh. Whaddaya know. I guess I thought it was the baby throwing her weight around. Certainly nothing particularly painful.

Between my cervical condition and the baby’s slightly high heart rate, we made an appointment for Monday to check everything again. Now, I know you can be dilated a couple of centimeters and have secret contractions for a couple of weeks before going into ‘real’ labor. Therefore more or less unfazed, I went about errands and then relaxed with a book. Not even a baby book.

That is, until around 4:30 this afternoon, when it dawned on me that yep, now that I think about it, those moments of belly tightness do seem to be happening repeatedly and in the same sort of fashion each time. In fact, it’s definitely not the randomness of fetal cavorting, though it really isn’t any more uncomfortable than the bigger baby movements can get. I guess… could it be?… contractions?? They’ve continued through the evening. Adding to the overall “How serious should I be taking this?” feeling is that I did have some pink-streaked mucus BUT there was a doctor’s finger inside my cervix mere hours ago. So, yeah.

After timing the so-called contractions for a little while and feeling more bemused than anything, I decided I’d get up and finish packing the hospital bag. Then Hubs and I went out and ate burgers (with that hospital bag and an extra towel in the car just in case)…. and, of course, we then drove back home.It’s 10:15 pm now and yep, they are definitely still happening, not really changing much, not really getting any more intense. But hey, if this is going to last for many hours (days?), then I’m super happy it doesn’t actually hurt yet.

See, I told you guys I’d post when stuff was happening. So stay tuned. If things suddenly start moving with a purpose, this just may be my last pre-baby post… Or maybe just the last one from a real keyboard and not an iOS device, which means less verbosity and a higher likelihood of autocorrect oddities. But I’m thinking we probably still have a good little while to go.

Data: Struggling for a real pattern, but I seem to be having about 3 or 4 contractions in a row that are between 5.30 and 7 minutes apart (mostly closer to 6), and then one longer break of 9 to 12 minutes between, and then back to about 6 minutes again. Baby is at 38w4d, and estimated at 7.5 lbs, so if she does show up soonish, she ought to be just fine.

38 Weeks

I have reached the point of pregnancy where, yep, it’s getting old. As much as everything has gone and continues to go astoundingly smoothly, I’m just about over it. I am not fully into the “Get this baby out of me NOW I don’t care if she’s early!” mode that I know women reach at varying points when the due date starts to draw near… But, I am thinking that maybe the compounding discomforts are an evolutionary trick to get women to look forward to, rather than fear, the delivery process.

Mostly it’s the fluid retention that’s making me crazy. My hands and feet are constantly puffy and frequently painful, especially in the morning. My right hand/arm have been a tad carpal-tunnel-y, which may be affected by all the knitting. I wouldn’t call my swelling ‘severe’ – not really bad enough to set off the preeclampsia warning bell – but knowing that PE is a definite risk for me, the swelling does stress me out. And the stress of it is vastly more annoying than the discomfort. Other late pregnancy complaints abound, too, but cause me less stress and therefore are easier to cope with for the next couple weeks. BH contractions. Hip ligament pain. Relaxin-induced snoring. Poo troubles (I’ll spare you the details). Not to mention the humongous fetus moving around all the time with no concern for my organs or bones.

Really, everything is fine.

Which is why I was so surprised at my last appointment when my doctor told me that the byouin’s head doctor wants to send me to the real hospital to deliver. I had a major internal freak out when she dropped that bomb. I guess she was reviewing cases with him, since he’s the boss, and he thinks my hypertension makes me high-risk enough to be sent to the big, actual hospital instead of staying at their byouin, which is a small specialized obstetrical clinic and birthing center. The thing about it is that my blood pressure readings have been consistently fine since I upped the meds, and have even been downright GOOD the last two appointments. Unless there’s some concern they haven’t shared with me, I see no reason the plan should change, especially when they never brought it up at all before 37 weeks. I would certainly deliver at the big hospital if it’s medically necessary, but it just doesn’t seem like it is to me. In fact, it’s like a couple of steps short of a C-section. Of course I’ll deliver by C-section if I have to, but I’ll be disappointed in myself. Having to go to the big hospital just feels like some kind of failure.

I have seen so frequently where women feel frustrated by a loss of control dealing with the medical crap in their birth experience, and the freak-out in my head when she brought this up was a little taste of that loss of control. Complicated, of course, by the language barrier. I was not, uh, very receptive to the suggestion. I stayed composed, but Dr. A could definitely see I was unhappy, and she hemmed and hawed a bit. She said that she knew I wanted to stay, and that she didn’t agree that my case was so high risk (but Dr. M is her boss), and they are storing my blood and apparently it can’t be transferred, and a couple of other things. I didn’t say much, feeling overwhelmed and honestly having no idea what would even be involved in transferring my care to the hospital. It’s probably best nobody took my blood pressure in that moment, or else they might have sent me to the hospital on the spot. Finally Dr. A said she would speak to Dr. M again about me – and then she left the room, so apparently she meant she would talk to him again right then. She came back and brought him in with her, which was the first time I’d met the guy. He speaks no English at all, but talked at me a lot in Japanese, and Dr. A translated.. sort of.. Dr. M seemed to say a lot more than what Dr. A passed along to me. Anyway we established that I know that my blood pressure is high and that eclampsia is very dangerous, but in spite of that, I’d really rather stay and be optimistic that it all works out. And for now? They have decided they’ll let me. Caveats, of course. My BP has to stay reasonably good at the rest of my appointments, and there is a chance that they may have to whisk me away by ambulance to the big hospital in the height of labor if things go badly. (Somehow in my head, the possibility of an ambulance ride to the big hospital is actually much more straightforward, as far as logistics, than planning to go there in the first place.) The outcome, then, is that the birth plan is still exactly the same as it has been the whole time. Only with more anxiety.

With that whole mess out of the way, how about your regular installment of ultrasound and belly pictures?

chubby cheeks

 

Once again, that second one’s just for the numbers. I love how all the measurements put the gestational age as OOR, which I assume means out of range, as Japanese fetuses go; when I enter the numbers in my trusty American website, she appears to be around the 48th percentile. It doesn’t get much more average than that. Their formula says she’s 7.1 lbs, but the Baby2See formula says 6.8.

And, of course, behold my bulging belly. No real weight change this week.

38 weeks

Happy new year to everybody. Here’s to new and amazing things. I didn’t get any champagne this year, so I’ll have to toast you with my glass of sparkling apple pomegranate juice beverage. And here’s to my easiest year ever for keeping a weight loss resolution.