At the appointment my blood pressure was again good at 120/78. Baby girl's heartbeat measured 140 & baby boy's heartbeat was 150. My cervix was completely closed up, aka not ready to birth the cubs and not open even a smidgen enough that the doctor could possibly break my water to get labour started. The doctor seemed very happy that we've managed to keep them baking for this long of a time. Perhaps I've been doing too good of a job however, as now the OB wants to induce us at 38 weeks. (I still have a bit of a conflict with the date of conception and figure we may be 5 days less than they're actually calculating, so it may actually be 37 weeks and 2 days - but either way we've made it pretty far along for twins.) It does leave me to wonder just how long the cubs would stay in my belly if they were simply left to determine their own due date.
Our plan from here on out is to either go into natural labour in the next couple of days (which is not super likely with a closed cervix, but possible), or to show up at the hospital at 10am on Tuesday morning (January 10th) for a scheduled cervidil induction. Our OB told us they will check me and then use the medication, let me walk around in the hopes that it may help to open my cervix enough to break baby girl's water at that time. If it doesn't cause a change, she also said they may just send us back home to wait for labour to begin. I'd rather stay and have them monitor our babies heart rates personally, so if it does come to January 10th, then I hope my body will either react quickly, or I'll request to stay and be monitored if possible.
I've started drinking red raspberry leaf tea again in the hopes it may help some to begin a natural labour for us in the meantime. I also pushed around our heavy vacuum today cleaning up all of the pine needles our tree dropped as Phil took it down. I've also considered getting out one of our exercise balls and bouncing on that for awhile, perhaps tomorrow. I don't actually know if anything I could do would help to begin labour, but figure it (hopefully) can't hurt. Now, we have to just wait and see what happens.
We also realized today that this is our very last weekend as a family of two. We're planning to go out to dinner at our favorite steak place and then watch movies at home and relax. Spending time with Phil is top priority right now. That and reading my book, which I'm only halfway through. Oh, and sleeping. Though I don't really get much sleep lately, mostly because it's a tad difficult to roll from side to side, with 12 pounds of baby in a torpedo form, attached to my torso. I now often have debates in the middle of the night with myself, as to whether I truly have to get up to pee vs. the difficulty of actually getting out of bed and walking to the bathroom. More often than not, I just determine that unless I'm on the verge of peeing the bed, then it's not worth the energy to get up, and I roll over and try to go back to sleep.
I will truly miss being pregnant. I've loved this journey and tried to cherish and appreciate the miracle every day. I love feeling our babies moving around in my belly. I love watching them move and talking to them. One of my favorite things is to share the experiences with Phil as he feels them moving around and to watch his excited face. We discuss deep notions such as how there are two people inside of my uterus which my body created from a couple of cells combining. How I didn't actually have to think about doing anything, but rather my body just knew what to do and grew two tiny humans. Also how our baby girl currently has all of her eggs inside of her, inside of me, and some those may someday be our very own grandchildren. Life is amazing.
Time passes so very quickly. It feels as though we've only been pregnant for a few months and our babies are arriving in approximately only 5 more days! We're going to have two tiny humans of our very own to care for, love and cherish. Genetically half Phil and half me. It's still quite mind blowing.
 |
| 37 Weeks + 3 Day Belly |
