*This* Close!

Yesterday almost went very differently then expected...meaning, we almost had a baby. At my regular doctor's appointment, they found that my blood pressure was doing some screwy things. It was higher when I was sitting up, but lower again as soon as I would lie down. Because there is a serious risk of pregnancy induced hypertension in first pregnancies (which can cut off oxygen and other nutrient supplies to the baby), my OB took it very seriously.

I ended up back at Mary Birch Hospital for monitoring and testing. Basically, if my testing came back positive for hypertension, they were going to induce labor to get him out. Things were going well on my end until, unfortunately, Lloyd had a little dip in his heart rate at one point during the monitoring. At this point my doctor told the triage nurse that she was going to come in and break my water. Ugh. We were still waiting on the results of my blood tests when they officially admitted me to the hospital.

I was sent upstairs to labor and delivery and the nurses got me settled into bed. In the meantime, Brad ran home to get our hospital bag (which I finished packing that afternoon!) and arrange for my mom to pick up Jenny. All I can say is that the L&D nurses at Mary Birch are AWESOME! As soon as they heard we had taken hypnobirthing training, they started planning which nurse should be assigned to me as well as looking at my test results and what was going on with me. Turns out all my blood work came back fine, I was barely having any contractions and Lloyd hadn't had any other abnormalities in his recordings. The nurses knew I didn't want to be unnecessarily induced and they also knew that if the doctor broke my water I would have 24 hours to deliver...which was unlikely to happen given my labor progress and without being induced...meaning I would have been on a fast track for a C-section.

The nurses took my case back to the doctor and she agreed to let me go home as long as I went back on fully restricted left-side only bedrest. Hey - no problem!! I'm supposed to then go back to the doctor on Friday and if my blood pressure is still funky, then she wants to induce...but at least she's giving me some more time. The good thing is that if we do end up needing to go the induction route, I am already 2cm dilated and 90% effaced...so a lot of the work has already been done or at least started.

The thing is, I feel fine. I didn't feel like I was in labor last night and felt rediculous being in a labor & delivery room. I'm showing signs of various prelabor activity (dilating, loss of mucus plug, cramping, lower pelvic pressure - although this is nothing new for me, baby's low, and increased exhaustion), so I know that labor will be happening in the near future. But prelabor can be a day, days or even longer. As long as Lloyd and I are ultimately fine, I'd much rather let nature take its course. Afterall, our bodies go through all these stages for a reason and I see no reason to fast track anything unless there is a true medical necessity.

So for now, I'm back to laying down and trying to relax, so that hopefully everything will look okay to the doctor tomorrow. My biggest concern at this point is that we are going to be seeing our OB's partner, so again we will have another person and their potentially very different opinions chiming in. Because of this, we have decided to also start the natural methods of labor induction today to make medicated induction go a little better if it turns out we need to go that route. Our hypnobirthing instructor gave us a laundry list of things to do, many of them super easy like massaging my achillies heel or pressing on my baby toe nail. However, I won't be climbing stairs or walking up our massive hill since that would prove while laying on my left side! So for now, wish us luck and we will have an update, one way or another, here pretty soon!