And the wait continues...

My mom found an old Ladybird Learning book all about Baby Coming Home. She used it on us when we were little and a new sibling came around and I remember the book and its pictures vividly. We have been reading it to Finn and his favorite picture is where a Daddy and a little Boy are standing in the doorway of a darkened room saying 'shhhh' to each other while Mama puts the baby in the crib. He practices that scene all the time. The picture above is him telling us that we need to shhh because we are putting baby (him) to bed for a nap.

We went into Seattle today for a midwife appointment. Baby is still doing well according to heartrate, movements and position, but the standard of prenatal care means that starting tomorrow we are going to start augmenting our midwifery care with hospital care. In other words, we start to have tests every three days or so to make sure that baby is continuing to thrive in his/her ocean room. So, tomorrow we are heading back into Seattle for some lengthy tests, of which I am confident we will do just fine (my internal baby monitor tells me that baby is happy and healthy in there-- lots of movement and general reactions to positions that s/he doesn't like etc...).

I am more dilated and effaced than I was last week and baby has dropped significantly. Our midwife thinks we are on the precipice and I do too. I have read lots of stories about women who went into labor the night before a scheduled c-section or induction or massive testing and voila! baby came out without medical intervention. I am secretly harboring hope that if we have at least had to wait so long, maybe baby could at least give me the same start to our birth story? 'The day you were born, we were scheduled for 3.5 hours of testing in a hospital that saw you as a statistic and wanted you to be born surgically just because you weren't ready to come out when the other babies do...'

To see if we could speed things along, I jumped off the end of the dock into Puget Sound for a short, icy swim this evening. It felt great, but Nick and my brother had to pull me out of the water like a whale because I couldn't get out on my own. That was an embarassing first, and a last, I hope.

Baby made some real annoyed movements when I finally got out, some tightened scrunches and strong kicks with all limbs at the same time, maybe three times or so, just so I got the picture. I kind of felt bad for the shock, but certainly won't feel too bad if it works. I was kind of hoping the 5 ft drop into water would jolt things along, but this babe and the body s/he occupies are both strong and I think it will take a lot more than 5 ft to do anything significant.

And so we wait. More tomorrow. Maybe even an ultrasound profile headshot because that's what ultrasound techs give you as a door prize for visiting.

xoxo