More efforts

Today we went to have my cervical membranes stripped. The doctor does it in the office in hopes of stimulating labor in the next 72 hours. The procedure was very easy but tonight I feel beat up from all of the efforts to try to induce labor.

They are giving us until Monday 7/9/07 and at that time they will induce labor with pitocin. I am really crossing my fingers at this point that we will have our baby by then and all will have gone well.

Still we wait. This is a true test of patience.

When it all started

After passing the due date (June 29, 2007) by three days the doctors recommended we jump start labor. Living in Flagstaff at 7500 gives doctors some concern when you are over 40 weeks. In their experience it is better to deliver babies on the earlier side due to the function of the placenta.

Our original plan was to have the baby at home with a midwife. However, insurance does not cover this $3000.00 expense so we opted for the hopsital deliver with NO interventions. Sadly on July 2, 2007 we were headed to the hospital to let medical technology intervene with what was supposed to be a natural process. I felt disappointed but I wanted the very best outcome for our family.

This photo above is of Steve with our overnight hospital bag and my favorite prego pillow that we name "the fortress" since it takes up all the room in our bed and leaves no room for Steve.
We arrived at the hospital just before lunch and were immediately hooked up to the baby monitor to see how she was doing. Now it was induction time. The nurses inserted 3 gels into my cervix to start dilation. I had to spend one hour after each gel on the monitor and then I was lucky enough to walk around for one hour to try to start the labor process. This means for three gels we were at the hospital for six hours. YUCK! I only progressed from being dialated from .5cm-2 cm with three gels. The hospital staff wanted me to stay overnight but I wanted to go home. Dr. Cherry Anderson was on call and allowed us the freedom to go home and return in the morning for more gel induction.



The next day on July 3, 2007 we headed back to the hospital for more inducing. I was so happy to have Nikki as my nurse and Dr Anderson as my doctor. I felt confident in my team and hopeful things would progress into labor.

After 2 gel insertions (4 hours) I was having contractions that were about 6/10 on the pain scale. They were coming about every five minutes and I felt excited because I was progressing! The nursery nurse came into our room and got the baby stuff ready and Nikki our nurse had the delivery supplies set up just in case.

When I was able to get off of the monitor and walk around, I also enjoyed rocking on the yoga ball to try to relieve some pain and to get things moving.










At the insertion of the third and final gel for the day I had progressed to 4 cm of dialation. I was confident it had worked and I would continue to progress until we had ourselves a baby girl.

After walking that final hour, my contractions slowed down, the pain decreased and nothing was happening. I was incredibly disappointed. It seemed like the next step was induction with pitocin which I did not want.

We discussed our concerns with Dr Anderson and she agreed that the baby looks great and sees no reason to induce just yet. We were sent home once again and told to come into her office on July 5th if we did not deliver naturally on July 4th.

Today is July 4th and we have had a great day with friends in Flagstaff. This picture was taken by our friend Pam who said it was the last picture together before we become parents. I hope she is right! My hope is that we will go into labor naturally sometime in the next day or so. I feel discouraged but I am trying to keep busy so that I do not fret. I am so thankful to have such supportive friends here in Flagstaff that have had babies of their own. So at this point we are in a holding pattern. More on our progress with the upcoming days.