Our Most Recent Doctor's Appointment

This past week we went in for a check-up. It was both a normal pregnancy check-up and a post-op check-up.

I left feeling great about the baby, but frustrated about the ever-nearing birth of our child.

First the wonderful part of our appointment...
The doctor tested the neuromuscular reaction of the baby, and boy is this baby a live one! (just like his sister) Using an handheld fetal heart rate monitor he monitored the baby's movement and heart rate pre- and post-honking something that resembled a clown horn. The baby's movements and heart rate both increased post horn honking. Our OB/GYN was very happy with the reaction, commenting on the baby'e excellent response to the stimuli. Hooray for healthy babies!

The part the frustrated me...
Arturo and I had discussed waiting for labor to begin naturally before going in for a c-section. Our doctor greatly discouraged this, commenting that if my water were to break or my labor were to progress quickly the c-section could easily turn in to a hurried or emergency process and that his recommendation was to pre-select the date.

I have an issue with this personally (not medically).

Babies cannot make many decisions for themselves until they are a bit older, but one decision I feel like they can make is when they come in to this world. I feel that with modern medicine and the increase in c-sections, we are taking away this important (and very natural) decision from them.

It frustrates me that I will never have a natural birth (I have mentioned before that this will be our last child). I know I can't compare a c-section to a vaginal delivery, but I cannot fathom that having your abdomen and uterus sliced completely open, having doctors stick their hands in and take out a 6+ pound human, followed by a minimum 6 week recovery period during which you have to be overly cautious about your wound to ensure that it doesn't become infected (which can be extremely disgusting and painful and including things like drainage tubes) could be better than pushing that same kid out of your vagina (which I would like to point out used to be pretty much the only option for having children).

The idea of having another giant incision that I have to take care of and let heal before I can sort of feel like myself again, plus taking care of two children and running my business while healing... daunting! Also, the fact that I have this second surgery impending, after having had one just a few weeks ago, is starting to get to me. I feel out of control. I am doubting my decisions, and worse yet, I feel like I don't have any decisions to make... I feel they are already made for me and I have no say.

At the moment I feel as though my life is being dictated by the fact that I already had a c-section, by my removed appendix (damn useless body parts), my unborn child, and my impending c-section. I feel like I can't educate myself on this topic to make the informed decision I want to make. So I have to trust my doctor's judgement completely. He is an excellent professional, but as someone who loves to be in control, letting go and having total and utter faith in someone else is difficult for me.

Also, being pregnant this time around has been harder for me. I am larger than I was with Kesha, the baby is sitting much lower causing all types of fun issues which I'll let you dream up on your own, I'm grumpier, have a hard time sleeping (as I write this at 4:00am), and feel pretty lazy in general (yes, I'm whining, get over it). I was even told at this past appointment that I need to cut back how much I'm walking, as 3-5 miles per day 3 weeks out of surgery is apparently too much.

We won't go back in to the doctor for another month and hopefully at that appointment we'll have a bit more clarity on when this baby will be delivered.

Since I've moped enough in this entry I thought we should end it with something more jovial. We will not be divulging the selected c-section date for a while, so even though we aren't guessing when I will deliver naturally, if you want to play along and guess our c-section date it would be fun! If you want to play here's the link to our ExpectNet online baby pool due date game. Good luck guessing!