And we're off.....bye bye, my own eggs

Here we are, again.  But there's no going back this time.  There's no last, did-it-on-our-own just before moving on to donor egg embryos. This is it.  I'm starting birth control pills on Saturday.

In some ways it was a relief.  My past few cycles had been 23 or 24 days long and, as usual, my body decide to eff with me and make this one 26 days long - just so I might get my hopes up that we'd actually pulled off another miracle.  It is a relief, though, to get on with it.  To get the HSG, mock ET, bloodwork, mammogram all scheduled within the next 21 days. [Oh yeah, and just for good measure, an appt with my OB/Gyn for a biopsy of 2 white spots she discovered while doing my annual exam/pap test this past Tuesday - yay for me :-/  ]

Since E can't go with me (no children allowed) to the HSG and mock ET, it was weighing on my mind about how I would get it all scheduled within the the 2 mornings/week that we have a babysitter.  But, as soon as it became CD 1 an hour or so ago, I got on the phone with my clinic and got everything scheduled.  Even scheduled such that I can still take E and the pup to my parents' lake cottage in 3 weeks.

I can't tell you how many times a day (like, every second of the last 2 days) I spent thinking - what if I'm pregnant with my own eggs again?  I so thought I was done with all those mind games.  A lot of the time it would lead me down a road of fantasizing about having another child with my eggs and what a great 'story' it would be about how my body responded well to pressure/deadline (i.e. with the threat of going to donor eggs the very next cycle.)  On the other hand, I did also worry that any pregnancy with my eggs might also lead us down the not-genetically-viable path again - given my age (42 next week!) and history.

So, here we are.  And, really, it isn't even that great of a shot with the 5 frozen embryos we have which were made with my sister's eggs.  They were frozen on day 1 so we really know nothing about their quality.  The plan is to thaw all 5 and see what we get.  We can re-freeze once if there are enough to re-freeze.  We've had the discussion about how many to transfer (if there are any to transfer), but we're going to wait and make a decision based on what the embryos look like.  I'm pretty terrified about having 2 embryos implant and then losing both just based on the difficulties of twin pregnancies (and a twin pregnancy at the age of 42 - although I had a super-healthy pregnancy at the age of 41).  I'd rather transfer one at a time and not run the risk of having no take-home-baby.

At the same time as I'm finding myself revving up all these fertility-procedure obsessions, I do sometimes remind myself:  we already have our miracle.  And she's enough.  Even if nothing works out (and we've already told ourselves we would probably try anonymous donor egg if none of the embryos from my sister's eggs works out.)  We have a beautiful, gorgeous daughter.  Yes, we'd love to give her a sibling.  I'd love to be pregnant again.  I'd love to parent another child - who inevitably (and not because they won't be from my eggs) will be different - as siblings always are - and will present different challenges to us as parents.

For all the pain we went through getting to this point, I really am grateful that I can approach this round of fertility treatments from a much different perspective now.  But I'll never forget how desperate I felt the first time around.  And I realize that for many out there, that desperation continues.  I am truly lucky that we are where we are.

Our miracle is 8 months old today:

Update: Life is good

It's been mid-February since I posted.  I did write one post a month or two ago, but it never made it to the 'publish' phase.  So, as quickly as I can (before the morning nap implodes - as it did yesterday - but, fingers crossed, hopefully not today), here's a quick rundown:

1.  7 months and 2 weeks - can you believe it!?!  E is so, so, so much fun these days.  Crawling (mostly in reverse, occasionally forward), grabbing everything (magazines at the grocery checkout - yep!), making lots of noises and blowing lots of raspberries and generally taking everything (and everyone!) in.  I can't believe how much fun this age is.  It really does make up for those first few really hard weeks and months.

2.  Back to my long-term 2 day/month consulting gig + a short-term, fairly intense, consulting project mostly in the month of March that took me on my first international trip since quitting my full-time job 2.5 years ago!  It was a quick one, thankfully.  I left Saturday night and was back by Wednesday afternoon.  Doha has changed a lot in 6 years since I was there last!!

3.  Vacation two weeks ago in Kiawah - bliss.  Having Mr.Right with us all day, every day was fantastic. He got to spend so much time with E.  We did almost nothing - went to lunch at the Seabrook club one day with family friends.  The rest of the time we napped, went to the beach, rode bikes (E in a trailer which she loved!), walked the dog on the beach and ate (cooked in the condo - no restaurants because E's bedtime is 6:30/7).

4.  TTC#2:  oh yeah, back at it.  Well, we've been "at it" since E was 6 weeks old, but as I think I reviewed in my last post from February it took a while to get my cycles back.  So, we've had maybe 3 or 4 "real" cycles but no BFP - of course.  We went to see Dr.Dry week before last about using our frozen donor-egg (sister) embryos.  I had Day 3 FSH, etc. done last week and revealed an FSH of 10 (I had previously had 9, 10s, 11s over the years.)  Dr.Dry talks about the body 'resetting' after a pregnancy and the FSH isn't bad, but we're not that hopeful.  I'll be 42 in less than a month and it took us 2 years of trying to get a genetically normal pregnancy.

Nevertheless, I'm dragging my feet a bit.  Mr.Right was all ready to jump right to the frozen embryos.  Of course, I needed to get HSG and mock embryo transfer done again and then a month of bc pills before a transfer.  We decided while we were in Dr.Dry's office that we'd see what the FSH said and if it wasn't crazy high we would give ourselves one more month on our own.  In the meantime, I'd get the HSG done between end of period and ovulation (Dr.Dry claims HSG can sometimes be 'therapeutic' - essentially clearing things out for an egg to drop).  But, I couldn't get on the schedule for HSG until day 11 of my cycle (this afternoon) and I tend to be an early ovulator so I was worried it would mess with the (albeit incredibly slight) chance of getting pregnant this month.  So, Sunday night as Mr.Right was suggesting a roll in the hay, we decided to delay the HSG.  I'll do it next month while on bc pills - screw the therapeutic effect for this month.

I know I'm dragging my feet a bit.  And to his credit, Mr.Right said he'd let me delay going to the donor eggs for months if I wanted to.  Of course, I know the statistics are such that even 6 or 12 more months of fooling around by ourselves will not get us, statistically, very much closer to a pregnancy - and especially a genetically-normal pregnancy.  But, I don't know, I feel like I just want a little more time.

We have ruled out doing any kind of IUI or IVF with my eggs - even though Dr.Dry suggested we might try IUI.  I don't respond well to the stimulation drugs.  And, frankly, I can not imagine how I would manage getting into the office for bloodwork/ultrasound every other day with E.  I know I'll have to go for one or two lining checks for the FET, but I think we can figure that out.

We were done with IUI and IVF with my eggs before.  And we're still done.  Not going back there.  I am prepared to use the embryos created with my sister's eggs.  I was before we miraculously got pregnant on our own and I will be again.  It might just take me a month or two to, once again, let go of my own eggs.

5.  First plane trip with E this weekend!  Aaack!!  I hope it goes well.  Only a 1.25 hour flight, but still.  I fear turning into those people I used to avoid in the security lines at the airport.  Oh well, I guess I am that person now!

At the beach, 3 weeks ago:

TTC#2

Wow!  It isn't even a monthly birth-day update for E and I'm actually posting something.  (But just because I have to brag a bit:  E is now 4 1/2 months.  She's discovered that she loves sticking her tongue out and she's just this week taken to the exersaucer - even making some of the toys spin around/play music!)

So, back to the reason behind the post.  TTC#2.  Yes, I totally will understand if you're still TTC#1 and are just disgusted reading blog posts from women who have one and now want more.  But it seems like more and more of the bloggers I follow are here.  It's great news in a way - they've successfully made it through the infertility/pregnancy/new mom journey at least once!  But, TTC#2 seems to present a new set of issues.

We're there.  Or, at least, we'd like to be.  Just to recap recent history:  I stopped breast-feeding at Christmas/New Year's/E's 3 month birthday.  So, it's been 6 weeks.  But no AF yet.  Mr.Right and I got back in the saddle (so to speak) at around the 6 week mark.  It wasn't all that comfortable those first few weeks, but definitely in the last month or so things have gotten back to normal for me.  Amazingly enough we seem to find the time on weekend afternoons when E is napping (we haven't yet been interrupted, lucky!! :-)

About 2 weeks ago I experienced what I thought was a pretty good amount of cervical mucus - oh yeah, bringing me right back to all the TTC cycles tracking that kind of stuff (along with temperature, O kits, etc.)  So, I attacked Mr.Right on a Wednesday night and we managed to pull it off every 2 days through that following weekend.

So, this morning, he asked whether I thought I should maybe take a pregnancy test.  I've taken one twice so far - once on Christmas morning and a second on Jan. 24.  My thought was that I wasn't going to torture myself by taking one more than once a month - especially since having not had a cycle yet I have absolutely no idea where I am in a cycle.

I hate being here again.  Getting my hopes up and then, inevitably, having them dashed with a negative test.  To recap even more ancient history:  I'm now 41.5 years old; I've been known to be anovulatory.  Just given my age our chances in any given month are way less than 5%.  We know this.  We want to try for a few months on our own, but obviously can't spend the 2+ years it might take to play those odds out.  I don't respond to stimulation well (hello multiple failed IVF (like, didn't even get to retrieval) cycles).  So, no more IUIs or IVF for me.  We have, however, 5 frozen embryos created from eggs my sister donated.  The big question will be when to start back down that road.

At this point, on one hand, I want to get AF so I know that I might have a chance of getting pregnant on our own.  On the other hand, of course, it would be nice to be already pregnant.  Of course, that's highly unlikely.

Maybe I'll wait it out another week before testing.

On the other other hand, since I used Lovenox and Folgard at the beginning of the successful pregnancy that gave me E, maybe I should test sooner rather than later?

Ugh.  All this again.

But, it's different.  E is here now and we are so very, very lucky.  I'm not yet sure if it makes any of this TTC'ing any easier.  It certainly hasn't put me at the same depths of despair I experienced last time around, but it's early days.  For now, one month at a time, I guess.

4 months!

Time is flying by here.  E was 4 months old two days ago.  There's a lot to say about what's happened in between my last post and today, but I fear I've no time to write it.  I'm back at consulting part time - back at my 2 day a month gig plus taking on a major short-term project that will be due beginning of April so I've been spending every spare moment I can get working.  It helps to have a nanny coming in Monday and Tuesday mornings and finally in the last few weeks E's morning nap has been getting a big more regular.  I'm still torn about using that time to run on the treadmill versus work.  I decided yesterday morning to get up at 5 a.m. to run on the treadmill.  Mr. Right, in solidarity, got up as well - of course, he worked on work stuff while monitoring the monitor.  I finished about 6 a.m. and took over the monitor so he could get ready to go to work.  This morning, however, I had to be up for a 5 a.m. phone conference with people in Doha, Dubai and Canberra.  No running.

Ok, that's a completely random set of sentences that has no coherent theme.  But it's about how things go these days.  Here's a coherent theme:  We are so, so, so lucky.

It's just fascinating to see what new things E does every week.  This week has started the squawking phase.  She seems to just like to hear herself be really loud.  So much fun!

She's got pretty good head control now when supported to sit up - either by me or in the bumbo chair.  I fear the cloth diapers keep her from really bending well at the waist, though, keeping her from doing much sitting up by herself.

She's still smiling lots.  My favorite time of day is when I go in to get her out of the crib either in the morning or from any nap.  She lies there in her Woombie (a godsend since we failed at swaddling!) and just gets the biggest, widest smile on her facing looking right up at you.  She's such a happy baby in the morning!

Otherwise, I'm doing pretty well.  The complete exhaustion of the first few months has passed.  We ended breast feeding around New Year's.  From week 7 I had decided to give up trying to increase my milk (I never got more than 15-16 oz even on the Regalan, pumping 8x/day, etc.) and just nursed each time she wanted to eat and then gave her a bottle of formula.  It was pretty good.  At least a lot better than the first 7 weeks when I was driving myself crazy trying to increase my milk.  And I guess I could have continued on like that for a long while, but we decided to begin to move to 100% formula around the 3 month mark.  Even though the odds are not good given my age (very few good eggs) and ovulatory inconsistency, we wanted at least a shot at trying to get pregnant again on our own.  Of course, I've not had one menstrual cycle yet so that probably doesn't bode well.  But we'll try for a few months and then probably around April re-connect with our RE to talk about seeing if the 5 frozen embryos we have from my sister's donated eggs are any good (frozen on day 1) and can be transferred.

I'm not really looking forward to going back to the clinic, but I regard it all - including the possibility of failing with all of the embryos we have - with a lot less emotion than last time around.  I can envision a life with just E as a single child.  I'm not preferring it, but it feels less like it would be the 'end of the world' if it happened.  I'm pretty sure Mr.Right feels the same way too.  I do think we'll give each and every one of those embryos a shot.  And I actually think if none of them works, we'll probably go ahead and do at least one anonymous donor round (probably not multiple rounds though).  But, we'll see when we get there.

One thing I find surprising.  I am really getting nostalgic for being pregnant.  Although to some extent I think the nostalgia is as much about *not* having a baby on the outside to care for as it is about being pregnant itself. (I know, and the whole time I was pregnant I just wanted to meet her!)  It was in some ways such an idyllic summer - taking my pregnant belly for a 3 mile walk every morning with the dog.  So much easier to get out of the house than with a 4 month old for the same walk!!!  (Although, E loves, loves, loves going for a walk in the woods either in her Bugaboo or in the Baby Bjorn.)

So, that's probably all that I have time for today.  If anybody is still out there following me (thanks TeeJay for the prod! :-) ) I can't promise I'm going to be terribly regular at updating, but I am still reading your blogs.  And occasionally, I even get to use two hands to type and leave a comment!

Our little cutie:

Long lost blogger

Yes, I'm still alive.  Barely.  Ha.  Kidding.  I think.

Really, as I sit here to type out a post for the first time in, what, nearly 6 weeks(?), with babygirl sleeping in the sling on my chest and a glass of white wine on the desk, it's with intensely mixed emotions that I begin to write.

Damn, this is hard.  It's been both the most wonderful experience ever and the most maddening.

Bullet points are probably all I have time for before she wakes and wants to eat.  Here are a few of the ill-formed thoughts that, in my blog utopia would be subjects of whole, well-articulated posts, but alas, this is all I have time for:

> breastfeeding sucks (this is a blog post title I've been wanting to write for 6 weeks now):  Pun intended.  And nobody tells you this.  Oh yes, yes, many of the bloggers I read throughout my infertile period and through my pregnancy complained of the pain of breastfeeding, but did I believe them? No.  I self-smugly figured they were just wimps.  Well, count me among the wimps.  Actually, the pain for me isn't physical so much (yes, I had mashed nipples, but never to the point of bleeding, back in days 1-7 or so when I was still trying to nurse babygirl and there was no milk coming out) as mental anguish and pain.  How could I not produce enough milk to feed my child?!?  A hundred years ago she would have died!  Of course, now we have formula and my blame-it-on-something mind decided that that was my downfall.  She had dropped over 10% from birth-weight on her day 4 pediatrician visit and the doctor wanted me to supplement.  My milk didn't come in until maybe day 6 or 7 and by then we were supplementing (with a bottle, horror of the breastfeeding nazis' horror) and it was all downhill from there.

Since then, I've done every regimen known to man to try to increase my supply.  Nurse->bottle-feed supplement->pump every 2 hours (that means I had only about 10 minutes between ending pumping and beginning the next nursing session); power-pumping for an hour every day; a course of Reglan; and currently pumping 8x per day while bottle-feeding whatever breastmilk I get (less than half her intake) and then supplementing with formula.

Why did I think breastfeeding would be easy?  I wish I had been more prepared for how hard and frustrating it would be.  I took a class.  My sister breastfeed both of her boys for 1 year each.  Why was I so unprepared?

Anyhow, nothing has really worked.  I've very slowly and only incrementally increased my daily pumping output from around 10, 12 ounces to around 14 and occasionally 15/16 ounces per day.  Babygirl is a voracious eater though.  She's taken as much as 34 ounces in one day!!

The Reglan did pretty much nothing for me, except make me crazy.  Seriously, a bad drug, at least for me.  I was drowsy to the point of dizziness.  I had this weird mouth thing:  the official side effect is dry-mouth but it felt like I was constantly trying to put something - food, water in my mouth to get rid of the taste and feel of it.  And I wasn't tasting/enjoying any of that food or drink.  And my mouth physically felt drawn downward (weird, I know.)  So, I'm tapering off.  3 more pills; one tonight and then one every other day til they're gone.

And really?  Given my 'poor responder' history with hormone-stimulating IUI and IVF drugs, did I really think taking a drug to stimulate another homone (prolactin) was really going to work?  As we know, my body completely refuses to obey medication rules.

So, I'm going to get off the Reglan.  I'll see where my milk goes with a few more days of pumping 8x per day (plus two or three what I call "social sucks" a day for babygirl) and then probably reduce to 6x per day pumping because I just can't even get out of the house pumping every 2-3 hours it feels like.  

I *think* I'm at peace with myself about only giving babygirl a portion of her nutrition in breastmilk.  It is what it is.  I suppose I could find some hard-core La Leche League person or another lactation consultant (I've consulted 3 already) that would figure some way to get me back to exclusively breastfeeding, but I'm just tired.  And worn out.  And done.  I'll keep doing some pumping as long as my milk lasts probably, but I expect it to fade away over the next couple of weeks.

> Ok, enough with the breastfeeding.  This post is already too long (thanks to babygirl being fast asleep) and too overly downer when what I really want to say is:  I am so blessed.  She is beautiful (everyone says so ;-) but really, she is.  And she's just started smiling at us the last two days!  I get tears in my eyes thinking about how long we waited to have her with us.  It's really quite unbelievable that we've got a nearly 6 week (tomorrow!) old in our house and she's thriving.  Yes, despite the feeding drama, she's over 9 pounds now and growing like a weed!  Her little heart-shape face has gotten chunky cheeks and her little skinny mini legs are starting to get rolls.  So cute!!

> Name:  cgd asked about her name in a comment on my last (epically long-ago) post.  I'm not going to use it regularly, but I do love her name so I'll tell you in this post.  It's Eleanor May.  Eleanor was my maternal grandmother's name (she was my last living grandparent until about 4 years ago).  And May was my husband's maternal grandmother's middle name, although it's the name she went by her entire life.  We wanted something that wasn't trendy, that was classic and it means so much that it honors our grandmothers.  We hope she'll love it as much as we do.  We will be calling her Eleanor and not Ellie or another nickname.  I had toyed with the idea of Ellie as a nickname but a) my parents used to have a dog (a beautiful liver and white Brittany) named Elle which we called Ellie, and b) Mr.Right wanted to call her by her full name.  So, we'll be calling her Eleanor.  Of course, if, when she's in high school, she wants to have her friends call her Ellie, so be it.  I also wanted a nickname and my name just doesn't nickname so I'm happy with giving her the option.

> Life as a post-infertile:  well, what can I say. I think it never leaves you.  Certainly the losses we endured and the pain of multiple failures to conceive with every known medication and medical procedure leaves scars.  But, they fade.  And I honestly have started believing on a regular basis that nothing could go wrong with my babygirl (a weird feeling not to anticipate the worst all the time).  And I know that's not possibly true.  There will be (medical) bumps in the road I'm sure.  But, she's here.  And, she's healthy.  And, she's beautiful.

> I hope for all of my blog friends who are still waiting and/or still worrying before getting to take their baby home for good that you experience success - whatever that ends up meaning for you.  I have a feeling I'm probably going to fade off into that not-so-frequent-blogger contingent who find it both hard to find the time to post and difficult to figure out what to post when we still feel the pain of our friends left behind in infertility.  But, I will try to update from time to time.  Some of my favorite blogs to read - even as I was still struggling to get pregnant - were those that had gone over to the post-baby side.

For now, I leave you with this from Halloween day:

She's here!

Well, she's been here for 5 days now.  Born Saturday, September 24 at 2:57 p.m. via stat c-section (oh yeah, more about that further down) weighing in at 7 lb 3 oz and 20 1/2 inches.

But before we get to the details.  Previously.........

In the last episode, I was scheduled for induction Monday, September 26.  I went in the Friday before for my last OB checkup.  All was well.  The doc I saw was actually going to be at the hospital Monday afternoon so we figured I'd probably end up delivering with her.  Yes, she looks like she's 12 years old, but I really do like her.  She's very straight forward and I get the sense that even though she's the least experienced at the practice, she's actually quite a good doc.

Anyhow, I was driving away (to the Blinds to Go store - don't ask) and I received a call from the surgery scheduler at the practice.  Did I want to go in this evening (Friday, September 23) and get induced tomorrow morning (Saturday) instead of Monday morning?  The doc who was head of the practice (and the doc who had done my D&C at 13 weeks of the Trisomy 18 pregnancy the previous year) was on call all day Saturday and I would deliver with her.  I told her I needed to call Mr.Right.  So I did.  We decided that, despite my desire to let babygirl come to full term (Sunday) and have a chance to come on her own, that this might actually be a good idea.  We like Dr.A and it would actually give Mr.Right a few more days at home with us.  And the fact that I hadn't progressed at all (read, no real dilatation) from the previous week meant it probably didn't matter if I was induced on Saturday or Monday.

So, we decided to go for it. I headed for home thinking about all of the things I'd been procrastinating doing because, gee whiz, this baby wasn't going to come until Monday!

I went in about 8 p.m. on Friday evening to the hospital.  After having to go back down to the lobby to wait for a room to open up, Mr.Right headed for home and left me there.  We figured he'd be more useful if he'd gotten a good night's sleep at home instead of on a recliner in the hospital room. As it was, I was shortly called back up to labor and delivery and put in my room, but with all the things they had to do - put in an IV, do an ultrasound to verify the baby's head was down, put in the cervidil (to soften my cervix), put on the monitors after the cervidil was placed and, finally, removing the monitors, bringing me my last food (jello, natch) - I never really got to sleep until about midnight.  My trusty British Airways eye shades and newly purchased ear plugs let me sleep a bit, but the anticipation had me up looking at the clock every hour or so.  Finally, about 6 a.m. they woke me up to remove the cervidil and break my water.

Mr.Right arrived about 7 a.m. and the pitocin was started.  We chitchatted with the nurses, Dr.A and he did work and I mostly lay there watching the baby's heartbeat on the monitor.

A first indication, although we didn't realize it at the time, that all might not go swimmingly was the baby's heartbeat got kind of erractic and dipped below 80 a few times not too long after they'd broken my water and started the pitocin.  So, they started an amniotic infusion - basically to replace some of the water to make the baby more comfortable.  This proceed to drip out of me for several hours.  At that point, they also decided to place an internal monitor - that monitored the strength of the contractions more accurately.

The contractions finally got to be fairly intense around 10 a.m. and I asked for the epidural.  It took nearly an hour to get but I made it.  Finally, about noon Dr.A came again and checked me - only 2 centimeters dilated, but she wanted to give it another 2 hours before making a decision.  Somewhere between 1 and 2 my parents and Mr.Right's mother showed up.  We chitchatted (the epidural was heaven!!!) until about 2:30 when while talking with my mother, Mr.Right and I both noticed that the baby's heart-rate was once again bouncing along around and underneath the 90 mark.  Just as Mr.Right was about to walk out to get the nurse, she came in.  They had me roll from one side to the other to see if things changed.  They didn't.  The heart-beat got more erratic and lower.  At about the same time, 4 more nurses came into the room.  It was suggested that the grandparents leave.  At this point, it was probably 2:40 or 2:45.  Things started moving very quickly.  I was given a shot to stop contracts.  I was told to get on my hands and knees (quite a feat with legs that felt like they were both asleep and tons of wires and catheters come out of me and tangling around me).  About this time, Dr.A came huffing and puffing into the room (and she's very fit - so she was out of breath, we later found out, because she'd run up the stairs from the lobby (to the 3rd floor)).

We were going for a c-section, stat.  The anesthesiologist was somehow there and I swear he practically had to hop on the gurney with me as they were rolling down the hall at top speed in order to put the additional medicine in my IV to make the epidural work for the c-section.  We rolled into the OR and mostly I remember talking with the anesthesiologist, asking him what I should and should not be feeling and trying to make sure I was actually feeling the block before they cut in.  At some point as I was still saying this to him, he said, "they've already made the incision."  In 33 seconds after the incision was made, the baby was out.  I heard her cry, but by the time someone pointed out that if I turned my head to the left I could see her at the table where the neonatologist was working on her, someone had stepped in my line of sight.

Next I saw Mr.Right come into the room, crying.  It still makes me tear up to think about how upset he was.  I later learned that they left him outside the OR door, because there were too many people working around me. He headed for the baby on the table.  And then he headed for me.  I tried to tell him it was all right.  And, it was.  The baby was perfectly find.  The neonatologist actually left and they continued on with the usual things - vitamin k shot, ointment in the eyes.  Eventually, Mr.Right was able to bring the baby over and hold her next to my head so I could kiss her.  We got a picture.

Then they left.  And I spent the next - who knows how many minutes - being sewn up.  Dr.A is incredible, really.  She was talking to me through the whole sew up procedure.  She took out my fibroid near the cervix since it was where she'd made the incision anyhow.  She kissed my cheek before she left to let the surg techs finish up the sewing up.

I ended up having to wait around then for the radiologist to come to do an x-ray.  Apparently, when they do a stat surgery and there's no time to count the instruments before the surgery they have to order an x-ray just to make sure nothing has been left inside :-)  Nothing was.  No airport scanner issues here.

Finally, off I went to the recovery room.  Mr.Right was there with the baby in a bassinet.  He'd been holding her for 1.5 hours.(!)  The grandparents and my sister were allowed to come up for a very brief time only.  After some time, we were finally transported to the post-delivery area and our room for the next two days.

Yes, folks, I came home on Monday afternoon after the Saturday afternoon c-section.  I just couldn't stand it in the room in the hospital anymore.  It felt like I was crawling the walls.  And basically my OB and the pediatrician cleared us to go if we wanted.

So, that's the story.  Kind of dramatic, huh?  But all's well that ends well.  Babygirl is absolutely perfect.  Everybody says she's beautiful (of course! ;-) And we think she truly is.  She has so many expressions I want to take a picture of every single one.  And at 5 days old only I'm already realizing this time with her at this stage of her life is going to be soooooo short.

More on the first 5 days in another post.

I leave you with this pic:

She'll be here next Monday at the latest

Well, I took the plunge last Friday when talking to the OB and requested a Monday (Sept. 26) induction date.  I learned Monday afternoon that I'm #2 on the waiting list which, according to the scheduler, means I'm almost definitely going to go that day.  That is, of course, if babygirl doesn't decide to come before Sunday, her due date.   I'll get the final word about the induction schedule (and instructions) on Friday afternoon.

We ultimately decided that we just didn't want to push our luck.  Even though yesterday's NST/AFI says baby and amniotic fluid are perfect and I'm still not feeling that's she 'dropped' (nor have I been really able to identify any contractions - even though I apparently had one while on the monitor yesterday afternoon), we just didn't want to look back in regret (or get into an emergency situation with the placenta starting to give out.)

I realize this means induction most likely and that means longer labor and maybe a c-section but I'm ok with that.  I still hope she decides on her own to start her way out by Sunday, but I'm also kind of happy to know the 'end date' of this pregnancy.

I was only a finger tip dilated last Friday and while 2 weeks ago one of the OB's said I was 50% thinned/effaced, the OB this past Friday said my cervix was fairly long still.  So......we'll see what this Friday's OB appointment holds.  But, regardless, unless I don't make it onto the schedule, I'll be going in Sunday night to the hospital so they can place the prostaglandin near my cervix and then I'll be induced on Monday morning.  Hopefully, I'll be able to get some sleep in the hospital (if I don't start contracting and if it's not too noisy).

Meanwhile, I'm feeling a bit more pressure every time I stand up on the underbelly (the part I can't see anymore!) and the occasional twinge down through my groin so maybe she is starting to move down?

But I've managed to walk the last two afternoons and intend to get out with the dog this morning before it rains this afternoon (again!)

Oh and, can I say this?  I never thought I'd still be enjoying what my RE always called 'marital relations' with the husband this late in pregnancy, but Mr.Right came home early last night and it was marvelous (blush!)  It's supposed to help induce labor, right?!?  :-)