Induction

First off, if there are any typos and whatnot, please forgive me. I'm super tired right now but I really want to go ahead and put this post up before I forget.

Had my 40 week appointment today. Gained 3lbs since Thursday. Some is food related, some is baby related, some is water retention related. All I know is for some reason I have this urge to ask for a gym membership for Christmas or something. I actually feel like getting in some exercise. I want to try and set a good example for my child and to do that I need to be in the habit of doing what my body needs.

Blood pressure was the highest it's been all pregnancy. 140/91. True I'd just come from walking around Sam's Club for about an hour and they took me in right away so I had no time to rest, but still. The nurse midwife did a second blood pressure check after the exam and it went down to 130/70-something. The exam was only about 10 minutes, maybe 15.

Cervix is still around 1 1/2cm dilated and 50% effaced. It really sucks. I was sure it was effacing some more because of all the bleeding. The baby is estimated around 9lbs 8oz. I'm not sure how they'd even calculate weight since it comes up after the circumference of the head is measured, the torso is measured, and then a femur is measured. It's all lengths so where exactly does this weight guess come in? But I'm confident my baby is under 9lbs. I think the little one just has a big head. The only thing that would be a huge problem concerning that is if my pelvis just isn't big enough to accommodate a large head.

So we talked of induction. I mentioned I'd be happy making it to tomorrow or Thursday at the earliest if I have to be induced. The guy said okay and I am all set for Thursday evening with the plan being to deliver this Friday. So I'd almost be allowed to make it to 41 weeks, so yeah, I'm pretty comfortable with this. And he's not going to use pitocin unless stuff just isn't happening. He says since I'm going to do this with an epidural he'd like for me to have more room to move and hooking me up to an IV for the pitocin wouldn't give me that. I think he also said it has something to do with my blood pressure and something else.

I'll be getting a tablet inserted somewhere in there which will ripen my cervix more which should hopefully start contractions. No matter what, though, this baby will be here by my birthday this Saturday.

And I'll be happy to not have to deal with this idiot much after that. I was very upset at how he reacted to my asking about the pitocin. He asked me if I had any questions before he started talking about what he was planning to do. I mentioned my doula had said something about how some doctors start off with the smallest amount of pitocin and if that gets things going they allow it to wear off and let the body take over. I asked if he did that and said I thought that sounded good. He answered by going into what he was going to do for my induction and then went on to say that he and the nurses at the hospital were the medical professionals and they've got the say so on however things have to go. That they're "the captains of this ship" and my doula should leave things like that up to them. He wasn't very nice about it.

The man looked offended when I even asked if he knew any good doulas that his patients had had and liked. He looked offended when I told him I'd gotten a doula. And now he's acting like a typical man, thinking his judgement is coming into question and being disrespectful to my doula. I really like this woman and she's helped me a lot so I was NOT happy when he went into his little tirade. I wanted to slap him.

I really, really hated that he acted like that. I was finally becoming more comfortable with him and he went and did something like that. I will never be seeing this guy again for a pregnancy if I'm still here the next time I get pregnant and end up being high risk. I'm also going to let the midwives at the birthing center know that this man is NOT the one to send women to who really, really want to go as natural as possible after being labeled high risk. He's great for those women who don't care one way or the other, as long as they and their baby are fine, but for those like me, who like to know as much as they can about their pregnancy and about labor and delivery, and who like to have a say in things he's not very good. Well, he might be okay if the woman actually gives him a piece of her mind and makes sure he doesn't do anything stupid.

Normally I trust the practitioner to do the right thing by me. It's stupid to trust them like that, but I do. In this case, though, I won't give them free reign. It's my body, my baby, my pregnancy.

But yeah, things are all set for later this week. I wonder how it'll be.