Last belly shots!

We took a few pictures tonight of my last night of being pregnant. (Long rambling entry afterwords, reading it is optional.)








Well, I'm realizing how true it is that "life is what happens while you're busy making other plans". After planning a VBAC for over four years I'm going in for my C-section tomorrow morning. :(

I have cried so much this week about it that I think I've run out of tears! I know I am so blessed just to be able to bear children and a healthy baby is what's most important, but I have had to mourn my ideal birth scenario this week. Each day I would wake up and say "I'm still here" and lose a little bit of hope. I'm sad I'll never wake in the middle of the night and say "hon, I think I'm in labor". I'll never know what labor pain feels like (I know it's crazy but I at least want to know what it's like), and I won't be able to watch my baby come out of me and then put her up to me right away. I know not everyone thinks those things are great (especially some that have been through it) but I have longed to experience them.

I've been amazed by birth every since I saw a birth video in my human development class. A lot of people were grossed out but I think I was crying. Then I had the privilege to help many women through labor and delivery during nursing school. I always loved it! I wanted to work in labor and delivery after I graduated, but the hospitals were having a hiring freeze and then I found out I was pregnant with twins. So again, life doesn't always turned out as planned.
After I realized the boys would be C-section because of breech presentation, I patiently waited for the chosen date--Dec. 18th. I was 39 weeks. I never dialated or had any preterm labor. I felt blessed. This time I've been excitedly waiting labor for about a month now. I have plenty of Braxton Hicks, but at every appointment, including today at one week late, the baby is way high, not even engaged, I'm not dilated and I'm not effaced. When I told the midwife that even with nearly 15 pounds of baby weighing in on my uterus that I never dialated, we guessed that probably labor isn't going to start in the next few days. I know I'll always wonder what could have happened, but I can't take waiting and wondering any more. Since I can't be induced because of the VBAC, (and induction wouldn't be a good idea because conditions aren't "ripe") I decided to go ahead and schedule the c-section.


I still doubt that decision about every other minute, and I feel guilty, especially after all my readings, but I think this maybe is best. I know eventually my body would have to go into labor, but I seem to have a cervix of steel, and I honestly think I wouldn't have gone into labor in the next few days. I'm not brave enough to just totally let nature take it's course. Maybe if I had a midwife who from the beginning said "whenever it happens it will happen," but this midwife has been saying that after 7-1o days past due we'll schedule another C-section. At least I had the opportunity to go this far. But they did give the deadline at two weeks past due. I didn't want to wait another few days just to still have the C-section.

I'm not brave enough to totally forgo their advice and think about going for another two weeks and being three weeks overdue, like one lady I spoke with who said all of her kids were 3 weeks over due (back then she didn't really have a choice but to wait). She said it was so awful being overdue, and now I can relate! Then there was another lady who I spoke with who said she was insistent on a VBAC too and all her kids were 10 days late and it just "tore her all up" when she delivered her big babies. That makes me feel okay about the c-section. I also have to think of words like "tear" "hemorrhoid" "episiotomy" "stitches". (still rather have a vbac, but I'm just trying to comfort myself).

But then the next minute I feel bad because the baby looks healthy and she is just happy being inside me. Maybe she does just need another week or two. Maybe it's not my cervix of steel but that my babies do need more time in utero. Instead she's going to go suddenly from her warm water home to a cold bright room and stranger's hands. That's what makes me saddest. I wanted her to come to my arms right away. I start remembering how they took the boys to the nursery after my c-section and I didn't get to see them for about two hours, and I still get upset about it. At least it sounds like we'll get to stay together if everything is fine with the baby and I. Hopefully I'll be able to nurse her fairly soon and that will go well.

I just hope I'm not as emotional as I was this week! I am scared for the baby blues to come when I already have been on such an emotional roller coaster.

I feel like I could write pages more of my thoughts and feelings, but it's getting late and we have a very early morning tomorrow. I really am so excited to have my baby. It will still be a wonderful event and so special to have her. I've been so obsessed with the birth itself that I haven't hardly thought about caring for another baby. Another child coming into my life will last forever, but the actual delivery won't.


I still love labor and delivery. I hope I can still be involved in it somehow in my life. Maybe I will still even go into labor in the next 8 hours! I did some acupressure points just to give it one last chance. But if not, I know I am so blessed just to have a baby, and I will be so happy to see her and hold her tomorrow in less than 12 hours! (Of course now I'm crying again thinking how I'll miss her kicking inside me and being a part of me--will my emotions ever level out!!)

Time for me to stop and go to bed!!