37w6d – Round two tomorrow!

Went in today for a follow-up on this weekend’s failed induction. Weighed (pretty much the same… up a pound or two), peed in a cup (interesting new shade of pee, but same stick results), and sat on the monitors for awhile.

Ivy’s heartrate was steady in the 130s for 10 minutes, when the doctor took a look. He said “looks like this baby’s asleep. Let’s wake her up so I can see some acceleration.” So, they had me drink some fruit juice and sure enough, within two minutes, there’s squirming and her heart rate changed up and down some. Doctor was happy with what he saw, so that’s good. Next, on to an ultrasound and (yet another) internal exam.

The doctor measured amniotic fluid (good levels… last week’s Level I U/S had her AFI at 20-something), we could see her practice breathing (also good, and has been a consistent observation the last 3 weeks :), and now she’s facing “east” instead of west. The internal showed that I’d shrunk shut a bit, down from 3.5cm at the end of the failed induction on Saturday, to about 2cm today. Stingy cervix. About 50%-60% effaced, and high. Ivy’s way up in there, too.

Now, prior to this visit, I was leaning towards “let’s not start a pitocin drip, unless there’s some kind of pressing medical need.” After the exam and U/S, they took my BP. The cuff was crushing the same area as in the hospital so that was somewhat painful. Unfortunately, I came in high again at 140/90… and it was a bit higher at home this morning before the exam than it had been at home lately (mid-130s/80s). So…

Dr. Montealegre scheduled me to go into the hospital tomorrow at 4pm, to be given a ripening agent (meth-something) to work overnight, and then we’ll start the pitocin again on Wednesday morning, and hopefully have Ivy in our arms Wednesday 🙂

I’m mixed on this… not looking forward to induction again, BUT if things go right, I’m ready to no longer be pregnant and to be a MOM. Dr. Monte said that the way things were going last time, if they HAD broken my waters, there’s a good chance it would have ended in a C-Section. Ugh. He said it’s time to deliver, because of the BP. He said that it’s good the numbers at home are acceptable, while I take it easy, but when I’m in the office and moving around, or getting poked deep (or later in the latent phase pitocin-induced contractions, when the BP rate started to creep), the numbers are high, even though I’m taking the medicine. Basically, expending effort causes the BP to rise, and guess what — labor’s going to be effort. So, I think I’m OK with that reasoning. Not ideal, but…

Well, here we go. DING DING — round two.