Small Successes-September 29th

Celebrating the little things in life that add up...

Major FAIL edition
I know that Small Successes is supposed to list some of my small accomplishments from the past week, but I'm not exactly feeling it today.  Instead, I'm going to list some of the week's failures.  Excuse me while I whine.

1. Last Thursday the plan one of the midwives and I had to strip my membranes, drink castor oil (did this 2Xs) and walk myself into labor didn't go as planed.  Apparently, when there are snowstorms many couples find ways to occupy their time and the maternity floor where I will deliver was jumping.  That meant that when I did go in late Thursday night with contractions 2 1/2 minutes apart for several hours they were in no rush to break my water and hasten the arrival of our little one.  Since my cervix doesn't want to progress past 2 or 3 (depending on which midwife you talk to) I'm pretty much stuck.

2. I have spent the past week resting, making sure I'm eating plenty so I have lots of energy if I ever go into labor and trying just about everything to get this little one to come out.  The stubborn baby has no intentions of coming out despite the fact that I have spent the past week having loads of contractions, many of them pretty regularly spaced, but not painful enough (because my water hasn't broken) for me to head to the hospital.

3. Finally on Thursday night last week I got my bag for the hospital packed.  Because of this I've been down several key items from my wardrobe.  Add this tidbit of information to the fact that I can no longer get food in my mouth without some of it hitting and staining my shirt and you can probably begin to imagine my frustration.

4. My appointment with the earthy crunchy midwife this Tuesday was a catastrophic fail.  She isn't the least bit concerned that I want this baby to arrive by October 1st at the very latest.  In NJ the school cut off date is October 1st.  If the baby is born on October 2nd or after she won't start school until she's 5, almost 6.  I don't buy any of the crap that redshirting a child for school puts that child at an academic advantage.  There are plenty of articles that back up my line of thinking that holding kids back is actually to their detriment.  I don't want my baby to have to spend a year in high school when she's a legal adult.  I'd rather her be in college at that age.  Bryan is telling me that we will find a way around the cut off date if she isn't here by Saturday.

Anyway, back to the appointment.  This midwife is against intervening and breaking the bag of water.  So if I go into labor and she's on call, she won't break my water which means I won't have the baby.  I've never progressed past 3cm on my own.  I'm currently 3, or 2 or a stretchy 2 or a good 2 1/2 depending on who you talk to.  I also have a baby who's "really low, -2 station or -3 station" depending once again on who you talk to.  Mind you all of these assessments were made within less than a week and some of the less promising ones were the more recent assessments.  Can your cervix close up after dilating?  If that's the case then we've taken a step back.

5. In an act of desperation, I tried to once again drink castor oil to see if we could get things moving.  This time I failed horribly.  Not only did I not get it down (it was cut with a 3:1 ratio of concentrate lime juice to the most vile oil on God's green earth) I also lost my breakfast on the kitchen floor.  So much for not throwing up the entire pregnancy.  Sigh.

I think it goes without saying that I'm pretty bummed that the baby hasn't made her appearance yet.  I'm uncomfortable, I'm not sleeping well, and I'm growing increasingly more anxious about having her by the cut off date.  Obviously my pleading prayers begging that I have this baby before October 1st are either not being granted or God's playing with me and is going to make me wait until 11:59PM on October 1st to actually have the baby who I suspect will probably be 15lbs by the time she arrives.