It’s been a while since I wrote my last pregnancy update here on Penny Blogs. Whilst the regular readers may have noticed that a new addition to the family had indeed arrived, I feel that she (quite rightly!) deserves a bit more than just a passing comment in a review blog post. But before I talk about her arrival, I’d better finish off my pregnancy story.
Back at 39 weeks I was pretty sure that it was just a waiting game as to when this baby was going to arrive. It seems that the size of my belly was to have other ideas though. My last midwife appointment saw me measuring large again for my dates, and as I was no longer following the growth curve in my maternity notes I was sent for a consultant appointment. Had this happened earlier in the pregnancy I would instead have been sent for a growth scan, but if this happens in the last week or so then apparently the sonographers say that it’s too difficult to scan and get a measurement, so off to the hospital for a consultant appointment I went.
Luckily they managed to fit me in just the next day, although when I actually turned up at the hospital there was no record of my appointment (a slight deja vu feeling with this particular hospital!) Luckily they seemed to notice just how heavily pregnant I was and an appointment was found. Even if I did have to sit there waiting for nearly an hour and a half for it!
The consultant decided that there was indeed a risk of a large baby so promptly said that my plan to give birth in the midwife led unit had to go and instead I would be booked into the consultant led unit to be induced. Bearing in mind that I still wasn’t convinced that my growing bump wasn’t due to a late pregnancy addiction to custard creams I did engage in a bit of discussion with her as to exactly when they were going to induce me. Taking into account when I would have LMC and Master C staying with me I wanted to try to plan it for a time when I wouldn’t have them with me. I also wanted to factor in when my mum could come to stay so that she could help out with school runs if I was in hospital for a while.
With a date agreed I was sent off, crossing my fingers that the two sweeps I had booked in before my induction date would do the trick. I also went a bit mad planning big walks for B and I to do in an attempt to. bring in labour naturally. I think the dawning realisation when we were furthest from the car park on a trek along the top of the Dunstable Downs frightened him a bit and I thought it wise not to point out that my due date five kilometre trek through Wendover Woods resulted in us being out of mobile phone reception for a while!
Despite the best attempts of the midwives performing sweeps (and their comments about my cervix being “favourable”) my due date came and went with me feeling incredibly well and not at all like I was about to give birth. Damn! I even got my mum down to stay with us should things kick off naturally.
Every FaceTime call to my kids when they were at their Dad’s had Master C asking if the baby had arrived or not yet and each time there was a look of disappointment on his face when I told him that I was still pregnant. It’s hard work explaining to a six year old that babies don’t arrive to a timetable.
And so the date of my induction arrived. I’d spent the day before wandering around antique and charity shops in Hitchin with B and my mum, and desperately hoping that things would happen naturally. As I set off on the school run that morning (still driving at this point!) I still felt no where near giving birth. I hugged the kids goodbye, not sure exactly when I’d be seeing them again, but knowing that I’d soon be getting a phone call telling me when to head into the hospital to start the induction process. It wasn’t how I was planning this pregnancy to end, but you don’t always get a choice about how things happen in life. Horror stories about other people’s induction experiences were going through my head and at this stage I couldn’t help but feel apprehensive about the whole thing and also annoyed that my body hadn’t made things happen naturally.