Leading up to birth

8 August, 8 months pregnant

For approximately a month leading up to my due date (30 August), I had been sick with what seemed like a never ending flu - I had cold symptoms, then a sinus infection, then a bad cough... it just never seemed to stop. It was hard to manage the normal pregnancy tiredness along with this cold, plus the task of taking care of Thomas.  To make matters worse, everyone in the house also got sick. Days before my due date, both Mum and Lessan were in bed with fevers.  All of this left me feeling very anxious about the impending birth.  I was worried that I would still be sick when I went into labour, or worse, that my body would refuse to go into labour because it was sick and I would have to be induced! I was also very disturbed that my family, who were the ones that were going to help during the homebirth, and afterwards, may be out of action.  All my carefully laid plans that had been in the making for well nigh nine months were crumbling before my eyes.  I had a good cry about all of that with Lessan a few days before my due date and started to come to accept that whatever happened would be the best for me, even if it didn't turn out as I had hoped.  "Nothing save that which profiteth them can befall my loved ones."

29 August, the day before my due date

 The next day (Saturday 28 August) I had a visit from one of the midwives from the programme.  My primary midwife wasn't available, so another one (who happened to me my favourite) came by.  That was 2 days before my due date and there had been no sign of impending labour.  Baby was only 2/5th engaged.  That didn't surprise me since Thomas had come a week past his due date.  But, I was still in a bit of an emotional state, and didn't like the thought of having to be induced, so when she started talking about the options regarding "prolonged pregnancy", I started to cry.  I was still coughing uncontrollably and feeling pretty fluey, so I felt like it was likely I would go overdue, but at the same time, didn't want to have to deal with all the implications of that.  She was very understanding and helped me go through my fears.  After I'd had a bit of a cry, she encouraged me to just relax and enjoy the remaining time I had with my husband and son as a family of three, to get out in the sunshine (the weather had only just begun to improve after days of rain) and try to feel happier.  She also casually mentioned that she had a feeling I would give birth over the following weekend and that she would be at my birth because she was on call that weekend.  That was a nice thought, so I tried to believe that and to follow her advice.

Lessan and Thomas with a mobile crane at Dardanup Heritage Park

During a tractor ride

The next day, we were feeling a little better, so Lessan and I took Thomas out to Dardanup Heritage Park, which was basically a museum of antique tractors, trucks, trains and many other machines. I had thought it was a national park, so it was a complete accident that we ended up there, but Thomas LOVED it.  We couldn't have planned anything better.  It was really nice to do something special with Thomas.  In the next few days, since Lessan had taken time off work to help me (and also because he was still a bit sick) we continued to go out almost every day as a family.  That was really nice and now I look back, I am very grateful for that extra time we had together just the three of us.

I tried to savour this extra time with only one child

On Tuesday 1 September, I went to see an osteopath, Annette Richardson, whom I'd been seeing for a number of weeks to prepare my body for the birth. At previous visits, she had claimed to be able to predict the sex of the baby. She hadn't told me what she thought, but when we said we thought it might be a girl, her face gave the impression that she didn't agree.  She then got out a pendulum to see what 'it thought'... it seemed to think it was a boy and she said "it's just a fun exercise, but you'd be surprised how often the pendulum is right."  We left thinking we were going to have a boy! We got more serious about choosing a boy's name after that.  Anyway, on this particular day, I was hoping that the 'balance' would might kick labour off, as that was something it could do if birth was "imminent", whatever that means.  During the session, Annette said she was 'playing with numbers' and that the number five came out strong.  She thought this meant that the baby would come on the 5th of September, which was the coming Saturday.  This echoed the midwife's prediction, so that gave me more reason to believe it. In a way, though I always knew there was every possibility that the baby would be born before or much later, I wanted to believe that the bub would come that weekend and so I stuck to it.  This belief made me so much more relaxed, since I felt like I didn't need to worry about going too far overdue anymore. I could just enjoy the next few days.

The next day, on Wednesday, I had a visit with my primary midwife.  She saw that the baby was now 3/5th engaged, so I guess it was at least moving down.  It was also in a really good position - left/centre anterior.  There were no other signs of labour, except a few more braxton hicks contractions every now and then and the feeling that baby was moving down. She talked about how if I got to 41 weeks, I should start going to the hospital to have monitoring every few days and asked if I wanted to arrange that.  I said if I hadn't gone into labour by Sunday, I would call, but that I somehow felt it would come by Friday or Saturday.

The website that talks about fetal positioning

The next day was fairly uneventful.  I took Thomas to playgroup in the morning and in the afternoon, Lessan, Thomas and I walked around the neighbourhood a fair bit, partly in the hope that it might move the baby further down (since getting it to engage could kickstart labour).  I also looked up some spinning babies exercises to do that might help.

By the next day, I still hadn't had any signs of labour, such as waters breaking, a "bloody show" (though there had been some mucousy discharge) or any real contractions.  That morning, Lessan and I took Thomas for a long walk to the local shopping centre and back. While Thomas slept later, Lessan and I began watching a spinning babies parents course and did most of the exercises as they were being demonstrated in the video.  Then later, we had a visit from the doula.  We told her that, though there were no real signs of impending labour, we thought it might happen the next day.  She lent me a document about acupressure points and how they could be used as pain relief or to help induce labour.  After she left, I got Lessan to practice using the pain relief acupressure ones on me and then I watched the rest of the spinning babies video, all the while being careful to sit in positions that promoted optimal fetal positioning and also move a lot.  That video kind of scared me, as it talked a lot about possible 'stalls' and difficulties in labour.  At the end, it also showed a little video of some ladies in labour and their screams didn't make me feel too relaxed.  I started to realise that if I thought I might have the baby the next day, perhaps now wasn't the best time to be watching such videos.  Anyway, I tried to relax and go to sleep.

Well... what do you know? Things started to happen soon after that. But that's the subject of the next post.