The baby says: anytime you’re ready
Jen squeezed in an appointment with our midwife today, after having some cramping and heightened indigestion. She probably wouldn’t have, if she hadn’t read an article just last night that listed those as symptoms of pre-term labor. And then she had a dream where she had an appointment at the midwife’s…. So, after I told her that it wasn’t silly, off we went.
Jen is measuring 3-4 cm.
The midwife didn’t seem to really anything was happening. She was playing along, making us comfortable, so when Jen asked for an internal exam the midwife obliged. And found, to her obvious surprise, that Jen was already dialated. Then we took a stress-test and found out that Jen was actually having a surge (which is the nice way to say ‘contraction’, which has too much of a fear-derived connotation) every 10 minutes or so.
But we’re only about 35 weeks — just shy of the midwife’s opinion as the earliest trouble-free birth. (not that the baby wouldn’t be perfectly healthy, but earlier than 36 weeks the baby hasn’t yet developed the ability to suck, swallow, and breath at the same time, and nursing is problematic). Jen wants to get at least 37 weeks. But the baby apparently thinks now is a pretty good time.
So for the next week Jen is on medication — a smooth-muscle relaxant, actually a type of heart medication — that will relax her surges. She’s off her feet now, too. After this week, the midwife told her she’d be ok to go back to work and do whatever she wanted to — but if she wanted to wait a little longer for the baby, she needed to wait!
So now it looks like instead of taking our baby to a new house, we’ll be getting a new house with a baby. Jen told Erin she would get to babysit while we work on the closing of our house. But I figure, hey, carrying around a newborn might help get our interest rates down a few tenths of a point…. 