37 weeks

Well, this is it.  37 weeks.  Officially early term.

I had my second NST + AFI with the local OB today, and everything is looking good.  Baby has finally flipped, so hooray for head-down!

Today I was pleasantly surprised to be seen by my favorite OB in the practice rather than the one I had been scheduled with — I think I’ve only seen her once early on in this pregnancy, but she’s the main doctor I saw during my pregnancy with S and she’s really the reason I came into the practice, so it was nice to reconnect with her.

She did ask me about how I was feeling about induction vs. waiting for spontaneous labor.  I told her I don’t want to go much past my due date, and she said that she understood and agreed and they’d be willing to induce me anytime at 39 weeks or beyond.

That was actually kind of reassuring to hear — I’m not into interventions, and I was really pleased to go into spontaneous labor one day before my scheduled induction date at 40+5 in my pregnancy with S.  But at the same time, I worry a lot about the small but rising risk of stillbirth after 39 weeks — for me, even though the probability is low, my experience with late loss tells me that I would not want to torture myself with wondering if I could have avoided it by inducing earlier if I ever did wind up in that situation.  In addition, the closer I get to my due date, the more stressful it is to have to worry every morning about whether or not I should inject myself with Lovenox (which I’m staying on right up until delivery thanks to the Heparin allergy we discovered in my pregnancy with S).  I was a huge fan of my epidural while delivering S, and I know I can’t get an epidural until 12 hours after my last dose of Lovenox, so if things start on their own and happen quickly I could end up with an unplanned, unmedicated vaginal delivery, which I am just not interested in (though I know and respect that many women are) — obviously I’d deal with it if it happened, but I also worry about what would happen if I ran into complications and had to have a c-section.  Without the option of an epidural or spinal, they’d have to put me under general anesthesia, and I both find general anesthesia pretty creepy and also would be sad to be unconscious for the birth of my son.  Induction offers a nice way to have a little more control over the timing of stopping my medication and not worrying about the small but real risk of developing clots.

So, the way I left it with her is that I’ll wait to see what my cervix is doing in a week or two, and we’ll take it from there.  As a multigravida who had a totally textbook vaginal delivery last time, the risk of c-section is pretty low this time, induction or not (especially given the results of the ARRIVE trial).  My plan at the moment is to aim for induction during the week of my due date, unless my cervix is totally unfavorable, in which case I’d wait until the next week (the end of week 40) to induce.  But I am not interested in the risks of going into week 41 and beyond, so if I haven’t gone into spontaneous labor by then I will stop caring what my cervix is doing.

And there it is.  Unbelievably, our baby could be three weeks away… or even less!  It’s thrilling and terrifying and unbelievable all at once.  I can’t wait to welcome him to the world.

Random potty win

So here’s a thing that happened tonight… S both pooped and peed in the potty!  Without any training whatsoever!

We’ve been talking up the potty, of course.  Mostly when he complains about diaper changes.  We tell him, “Oh, I know you don’t like diaper changes.  Did you know that once you learn to use the potty, we’ll never have to change your diaper again?”  But he’s shown almost zero interest, and usually refuses to sit on the potty when we ask.  Everything I’ve read has said to either train way before a new baby comes or way after, and since he was showing almost no signs of readiness a few months ago we have just been ignoring potty training as a thing altogether.  Still, sometimes he asks to sit on the potty, and of course we let him, but nothing has ever happened when he’s done it before.  Honestly, mostly it’s been after he poops, as a way of stalling before a poopy diaper change.  But hey, whatever, sitting on the potty is sitting on the potty, amirite?

Well, apparently something is starting to click in his brain, because tonight after his bath he was sitting on my lap wrapped in a towel when he said

“S almost peeing!”

“Do you want to go sit on the potty?” I asked him.

“Yeah!”

So daddy whisked him off to the potty, where he proceeded to both pee and poop like a champ!  And he even told us that he wasn’t done and needed to keep sitting on the potty, and then pooped some more.  We had a celebratory dance and lots of praise and talked about how cool it was that he pooped and we didn’t have to change his diaper!  (Though, wiping is a challenge — he wanted me to wipe him while he was sitting on the potty “like when mama and dada go potty!”  I tried, but I was like, “Um, sorry buddy, I’ve never done this before either…”  Any tips for toddler wiping???)  Then we had him say “Bye-bye poop!” and he got to flush, and he seemed very proud and excited about the whole thing.

We are reluctant to go full-on potty training mode a mere 4.5 weeks before my due date, but at the same time, this seems like it might just be a real opportunity to seize.  I think we’ll just go with the flow (I mean, hey, it’s worked so far!) and see if he continues to be interested, or if this is just a one-time fluke.  But if he shows any more interest, I think a trip to Target to let him pick out some big-boy undies might be in the cards for next weekend.  I have to say, I could never have imagined that I’d be this excited to watch someone else go to the bathroom! 🙂

Breech Watch

35 weeks today!  Hard to believe our new little guy will make his appearance in about a month!

Everything is still looking good, with one exception: he still hasn’t flipped to head-down, so we are officially on breech watch from here on out.  Last week the ultrasonographer at MFM told me he was breech, and today the local OB did a quick scan showing that he is transverse.  She said that if he really moved from breech to transverse on his own in the last week, she’s “very optimistic” that he’s still on the move and will flip on his own.  But if he’s still not cephalic next week, they’ll schedule a version for the following week.  It’s a bit complicated by the fact that he’s on the large side, still measuring around 80th percentile, so it’s not clear how much longer he’ll have room to move on his own.

I’m mostly managing to not freak out about this news.  I know that both late flippers and successful versions are more common if you’ve given birth before, so I’m hopeful that either he’ll flip on his own or a version will be successful.  Worst-case scenario (currently at about 25% probability, according to my reading) would be a scheduled c-section if he won’t flip.  While I’d love to avoid a c-section if possible, my perspective since the loss of our daughter has always been that whatever gets baby out as safely as possible — for both baby and mom — is the way to go, and if that’s a c-section (which it sounds like it is, thanks to the Term Breech Trial), so be it.  The idea of a c-section freaks me out quite a bit, and I can’t help but think wistfully of my super-easy recovery from S’s birth, but at least a scheduled section sounds less scary than an emergency section.

Otherwise, it has so far been my favorite kind of pregnancy: boring and uneventful.  I finished my hat-knitting project (I wound up knitting three sizes of hats just to make sure there’ll be something to fit each of two kids), and I’m looking forward to giving them to my sons (plural!  can you imagine?!) after the birth.  The nursery is in reasonable shape, all of S’s old clothes are washed and organized, S is going nuts waiting for Halloween, as well as being obsessed with the two new babies in his daycare (he almost cried when baby Jack wasn’t there this morning), and we’re just generally trying to get the last few things on our to-do list done.  Except for some rain, we’re having beautiful fall weather, and I’m mostly just trying to enjoy these last few precious weeks as a family of three before our lives get upended, hopefully in the most joyful possible way.