Baby!

Birth Story: Tuesday morning - at home

At 5:30, I woke up. It was now 24 hours past the time when my membranes had ruptured. At this point, it was really time to figure out what we were going to do. I was feeling so frightened and discouraged and betrayed by my body. I had really lost heart. I sent an email to Delia, explaining how upset I was, because I knew that she would understand, and I just needed to talk/write about it. Throughout this pregnancy, we've talked about about what kind of childbirth experience we want, and we have very similar feelings about it.

Finally, I woke Travis, and we showered and made sure that we had everything packed.

I called Cat at around 7:30, having put it off for as long as I felt like I could. I really was trying to give my body every minute to figure out what it was doing!

I felt bad calling her so early, but it turns out that she was already awake, so it wasn't a problem. She sounded so lucid and calm that it really helped me feel better, just talking to her. It turns out that she had been doing more research, as well, and had also seen the Canadian study. She called the doctor on call (Dr. Smith), and explained the situation, and how badly I wanted to avoid induction.

Dr. Smith is a doctor that the midwives have just started working with, and it turned out that she had worked with a lot of women who had PROM, and had experience with giving them time to go into labor on their own. She said that she was very comfortable letting me just wait for natural labor, but that she would like to keep an eye on the baby by doing twice daily non-stress tests to ensure that he was still doing all right.

I was ecstatic. I was thinking that my ideas of the perfect birth could still happen, and that everything would be fine. I started to calm down for the first time in 24 hours. We agreed to meet Cat at the hospital at 8:00am to do the first non-stress test.

A non-stress test is basically just a monitor that watches the baby to make sure that his heart rate is doing what it is supposed to be doing. For instance, when he kicks or moves, his heart rate should go up.

In addition, they planned to check and make sure that the baby was still safely nestled in amniotic fluid. I had lost a lot of it, of course, but the baby should be remaking it to keep himself cushioned and happy. I had been drinking a ton of water since my water broke, so I could replenish it fast enough.

They also wanted to do a biomedical workup, or something like that. I can't remember what it was called. Anyway, they wanted to look at him in the ultrasound and make sure that he was still practicing breathing movements, moving his arms and legs, and that he showed good muscle tone.

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