Pregnancy and Birth – Page 14 – a hippie with a minivan

It might not be it…

but something is happening…

this may have TMI for some 😉

Usually my evenings are full of prodromal labour… and then everything disappears in sleep and I wake to no more contractions until the next evening… this morning however, I woke up to the babe back in an LOA position and I am getting contractions every once in a while… not painful and not close together but just the fact that it is morning and they keep on coming is enough for things to seem different…
I decided to check myself again, for the last few weeks my cervix has been pretty closed, posterior and effaced just a bit, I did dilate a bit last week but it then went back to closed…I didn’t think that it could do that… of well… I have also been very dry… so, I decided to check myself again today and though my cervix is still pretty much posterior, it is mushy and it is opening and to my surprise I have quite a bit of mucous…

So something is happening… we’ll see where it goes…

Letting go of some fears…

I’m contracting at the moment.. I don’t know if this is it or not yet and I don’t want to get my hopes up… they are getting painful though and I have dilated a bit… so the contractions are doing something…
However, there are some fears that I need to let go of however before anything does happen..

First, this labour will be different, I feel it, I have felt it for months now. The position is different, the discomforts are different. I have never experienced labour in a normal way… just hours of back labour… back labour that lasted until the last few minutes… Though some say it is worse… I don’t know… that is all I know about labour… It is this fear of the unknown that I need to get rid of…

I am not scared at all about having a UC, I am ready for it, I feel ready, I trust my body and I trust my instincts… I have been wondering though if these other fears that I have been having have been inhibiting my contractions to go anywhere for the last 2-3 weeks… I have had hours of prodromal labour that have fizzled out… and each time i happened when I thought about the actual labour, the unknown of it all… the unknown of a labour that may progress normally…

I am letting go of these fears now…. it may not happen tonight, tomorrow or even this week but it will happen and I know that I can do it…

Here is a list of some positive affirmations that I will be telling myself…

My mind and body can handle a labour of any kind.
I will have a strong and healthy baby.
I trust my body to know how to birth this child.
I trust my instincts to know what I need in labour.
I trust my instincts to do what is best for my baby.
I trust my pain
I embrace the concept of healthy pain.
Good strong contractions help my baby come into the world.
I am now willing to experience all my feelings.
My body is beautiful, capable and strong.
My body knows how to have this baby, just as my body knew how to grow this baby.
I feel confident; I feel safe; I feel secure.

officially tired…

I have to admit that I am officially tired of being pregnant. This pregnancy was pretty easy up to a few weeks ago when my pelvis started to really hurt. I was tired and got tired quickly and I had sciatic nerve problems but the Chiro helped with that…

If it wasn’t for this Pelvis pain I would be OK… still tired maybe but not as much as now… The worst times for me is when I am laying down, so the bed actually looks like my enemy… I can’t sleep because I hurt too much, I can’t twist and turn because the pain is excruciating… So I stay in the same position all night and just doze lightly… when I need to finally move I have to go really slowly onto my back… I can’t roll because my pelvis is locked into place so I have to lift myself up a bit to turn and then once I am on back I have to release all of my muscles and wait until I hear a big pop in my pelvis and then I can finish turning or get up… of course the first minutes up are so hard also…

My mom is going to be giving me her old couch soon and a big arm chair… it was supposed to be here this weekend but it didn’t happen… but if I am still pregnant when we get it I think I will be sleeping in that for the rest of the time…

Also, since Thursday or Friday the baby is in weird positions nd I haven’t had as many contrax… it doesn’t move much but when it does it changes position… sometimes it’s back is on the left, sometimes on the right, sometimes even posterior for a while and often it is oblique and resting its head on either side of my hip… I thought it had started to engage for a while but it doesn’t seem to have happened now and it is just turning and turning and I don’t think that I will go into labour soon, but really… I just don’t know…

Really.. I am just tired of being pregnant, I can’t wait to hold the new babe in my arms… I can’t wait for Simon to be home with us so that we can all take the time to relax and recuperate. I hope so much that this pain will stop after the babe is born… I need to be able to lay down again and relax my body instead of being in pain…

I know perfectly well that the babe will come when the babe is ready and there is no way that I would risk rushing it… but the last weeks are hard…

La Bassine…

I tried out the birth pool last night… the motor was so loud to blow it up but it didn’t wake up the kids at all… Simon’s ears were ringing though!

It took about 25 min to fill up the pool and one hot water tank full (we can’t figure out how to put the temp higher on the tank) anyway… it was pretty much the perfect temp with what we had… I got in and vegged out for a while before I decided that it would be better just a bit warmer… Simon heated up some water on the stove and that made all the difference… I stayed in for about another 30 min after that and the water stayed at the exact same temp so I know that it keep the temp well…

The test run also brought a test run of uncomfortable contrax… I had checked myself a few days ago and was still closed, not really effaced but soft…. My cervix was also still quite posterior… this morning I decided to check again and I was so surprised that after the few hours of contrax last night I am now dialated a bit, mushy and much more effaced and my cervix is much easier to reach…

Though I know that it doesn’t mean anything what it means for me is that things are different this time around…. I never dialated before labour… the boys were posterior and just didn’t put any pressure on my cervix… so what it tells me is that things have a good chance of being different this time… I may have th chance of getting a shorter and better birth experience… not having back labour and labour not stalling at 3-4 cm after spending hours to get there…

We decided that it will be better to keep the pool inflated until the birth… It will be placed in the living room when the time comes so for now it is propped up against the patio door in the kitchen…

I am very happy with my pool choice… is is SO comfy, I love the height, I love how sturdy it is and I love the shape (oval) which makes it so that I can have my legs extended or turn sideways and be able to push against the side… the inside handles make it easy to change position and it just feels like a little cocoon but not suffocating at all…. I feel comfortable and safe in there…

Oh… and while I was in there I decided to make it an ultimate test time and eat the rest of the Haagen Daaz Baileys Ice Cream that I bought a few days ago… yummm……

contrax… contrax…. contrax…. move…. nothing

Since Friday I have been having contrax at regular intervals off and on… nothing to really think it was the start of labour but just enough to annoy me and wonder…

My pelvic pain has been so bad the last few days also… It really looked and felt like things were gearing up….

then last night… I slept… I slept well and I didn’t have as much pain when I turned over… I mean… I could actually turn over without tears…. it still hurts a lot but not nearly as much…

Babe has also changed position… instead of being LOA it has moved to ROA… and I think the reason the pain went down was that the babe was a bit sideways for a while and it’s head was lodged right on top of my left hip and putting a lot of pressure there… now I don’t feel that pressure there anymore… and the pain is a lot less… now to find the head again… though I have a feeling it may be a bit lower because I have not stopped using the bathroom since this morning…
I also haven’t had a contrax really today… so I don’t know what happened but the last few weeks look a bit brighter now… I was really getting to the point that I didn’t want to be pregnant anymore, now I feel that I can stand another week or two without a problem… though of course, I am looking forward to meeting the little one…