Pre-Labor (I hope) Update

So on Tuesday, my due date, I got acupuncture, and I definitely felt like it started something. Since then, I've been having Braxton-Hicks contractions non-stop, and I'm pretty sure I lost my mucus plug or some bits of it over the last day or two. I've also been feeling increasing pressure on my cervix.

Last night I was desperate enough to try taking a long walk--I wanted to harness the power of these Braxton-Hicks! Plus, my Dad has been pushing the walking for a week now. So James and I went to UConn and I waddled around at top speed and raced up and down many sets of stairs. I will say that this had the effect of making the contractions I was having more painful. However, if we would stop for even a minute, they would stop being painful, and once I returned home, that was it. They might have been been painful because I was asking my poor abdominal muscles to hold up a 30 pound uterus while I jostled it all over.

Anyway, I couldn't fall asleep last night, partly because my back was hurting, and partly because I drank caffeinated tea all day yesterday. I eventually fell asleep on the couch watching Harry Potter 4 and with my ribs belted together.

And now it is Thursday the 18th--the last day of my prediction window that I felt was incredibly realistic. ::snort:: Anyway, honestly, if it wasn't for the acupuncture, I would have little hope of giving birth before 41 weeks. But my friend claims his patients are more or less "on time", within a couple of days.

So I have another acupuncture appointment today at 1pm and considering all the pre-laborish stuff I've been having for two days straight, I'm feeling good about the possibility of going into labor tonight. Please send little James all the evacuation vibes you can possibly spare!! ;-)

Soooo Soooore

So my patient period has ended and I am back to feeling miserable. My back and belly are just CONSTANTLY so sore and I just want it to be over.

I have another acupuncture appointment tomorrow. Sigh.

0 is the number of days until I can go into labor and still have my home-birth (36 weeks)
0 is the number of days until I am full term (37 weeks)
1 is the number of days until my meaningless due date (40 weeks)
9 is the number of days until the actual average due date (41 weeks and 1 day)
15 is the absolute maximum number of days that I could be pregnant (42 weeks)

Acupuncture!

So I had my first (and hopefully only) acupuncture appointment today for stimulating me to go into labor. God I think I was in the best mood ever when my friend Craig came in to needle me. He was like:

"So if you are still a week away from your due date, you might end up going a few days early if we do it today. Is that okay?"

"GOD, YES, IT IS AWESOME. DO IT. DO IT NOW." I said. And the look of eye-rolling joy that those caps conveys is a perfect vision of what I looked like in that moment. Picture those horses who look insane and their eyes are rolled back in their head and their mouth is hanging open. That was me.

"It should work pretty well since you are young and healthy and everything," he went on.

(YES AWESOME THANK YOU.) I was as freaking jovial as a kid on Christmas morning, and that is after only like 5 hours of sleep--easily half what I need to feel rested.

So now I'm guessing any time between tonight and Sunday. So probably the 10th-14th. That window is like half as big as my original 9th-18th one!

Anyway, if I'm still pregnant on my due date, I have another appointment then.

D.O.N.E.

Yep, totally done with this whole pregnancy thing.

It's SO weird how I watched other people go through this "end of pregnancy-so done" phase and thought that I would have so much more patience when I got to "that" point, and it's only two more weeks, they should just buck up and stick it out, yadda yadda.

Well, now all my well meaning advice is coming back to bite me in the ass because NOW I know how they actually felt. Yes, logically I have 2, 3, or even 4 weeks left. But you can bet your butt that if I make it to my due date, two weeks from today, I will be JUST as desperate, miserable, and impatient as (almost) every other pregnant woman who makes it to her due date.

To recap--I'm sleeping just about 12 hours a day every day. This has been the case for awhile. Just TRY to wake me at hour ten and you will pay. However, until about five days ago, this half of my life I spent sleeping was mirrored by awake hours where I was, as my midwives describe, quite perky. I had a good amount of energy, could get plenty of stuff done during the day, etc.

However, for the past 5 days or so, the 12 hours don't seem to be enough. I'm tired again an hour or two after I wake up--I can't focus on anything, my brain feels like it is in a fog . . .

Then there is the physical discomfort. I need to sleep on ice packs so that I can fall asleep without my back hurting. There is no position I can lay, sit, stand, walk in that I am not completely uncomfortable. This makes falling asleep or getting into any kind of "relaxed" position very difficult. Right now I'm perched at the edge of my couch with my stomach hanging off the front and my laptop on the coffee table.

And, I have no energy to do anything. The laundry and dishes pile up. I only make dinner because I'm hungry and really want to eat it. I really hope that I have some nesting energy hit me before I go into labor so that Lil James isn't born into a filthy hovel. My days are spent sleeping and whining and trying not to be too miserable--watching TV and attempting to distract myself from my physical discomfort and irritability.

So the strategies to evacuate baby Irwin begin. I'm not nearly desperate enough yet to try sex or spicy food, especially given the discomfort and heartburn I felt after my last spicy food experience. But I'm chugging red raspberry leaf tea like it is my job, and I'm taking Evening Primrose Oil daily. Craig (acupuncture friend) said I could take up to 5000 mgs a day (or of Borage Oil), but not to get that high with the dosage until I get to 39 weeks. I've been taking 500 mgs a day for the last week, I'll probably bump it up to 1000 mgs today though and increase little by little until I'm taking as much as I can.

I have an appointment with Craig on Monday (one day shy of 39 weeks) to start baby evacuation acupuncture. It's not really supposed to work until the baby is ready anyway, but he claims to have never had more than one or two women go more than a day or two past their due dates. SOUNDS GOOD TO ME. At this point being pregnant until 42 weeks--a serious possibility for the average (non-intervened) person--sounds akin to Chinese water torture.

I AM READY TO MEET YOU, LITTLE JAMES! It seems like you have plenty of energy but Mommy has none. Please come out now as soon as you possibly feel ready.

Thank You Acupuncture!!

As I've mentioned, I go to get weekly adjustments from a chiropractor, who also happens to be my good friend. Her partner, who is an acupuncturist, is also my good friend. Though I don't get acupuncture nearly as often, it is definitely useful for some things.

For instance, a few weeks ago when James David was still head up, I made an appointment for yesterday to get him to flip over. Craig (my friend) said that it was pointless trying to flip them sooner because they would just flip back. So I made the appointment just in case I got here and he was still head up.

Luckily, as we know, he is head down and engaged. The shooting pains down my inner thighs and my 2X per hour bathroom trips are evidence of that. (And, on happier notes, less heartburn and more ability to put on my own socks).

So when Craig walked into the room yesterday and said: "So what are we treating you for today?" at first I was like: "Uuuuhhh, I don't know! He's head down and engaged, so that's good, and it's not time for him to come out yet, so I don't need acupuncture for that yet . . . " Finally I ended up explaining about the back pain I have been having.

So he did his thing and I sat there with needles in one arm and one leg, wiggling my back from time to time, per his instruction, and I could actually feel things happening in there--a heat flowing through . . . afterwards, I went merrily on my way.

And you know? It helped SO MUCH!!! It isn't completely and totally gone, but last night was the first night in maybe a week that I didn't take Tylenol just so I could fall asleep. Over the last week or so, I've been asking James to rub it so hard and so often in this one spot that I think I have bruises now. Well last night I was able to let them heal because I needed minimal back rubbing as I fell asleep.

I am just SOOOO grateful. Especially since in the past, when I've had acupuncture, it usually takes a couple days before the treatment reaches its full effectiveness, so I'm hoping it will continue to be really manageable!!

I don't know why I sound so surprised. Acupuncture has done miraculous things for my back pain in the past. But usually back pain is supposed to be caused from blocked qi that is caught in your stiff muscles (according to chinese medicine), and I guess I figured since mine is caused from carrying a baby around in my uterus that he might be less able to help me. But I was so wrong. I could feel that qi getting unblocked as I sat there, hehehe!!

I am just so so happy, it's been pretty miserable the last couple of days.

I made another appointment for 3 weeks from yesterday (the day before I am 39 weeks), so I can get acupuncture to make the baby come on time. Craig has great success with inducing labor and said none of his patients have EVER gone more than 1 day past their due date. So I made that "Let's kick the baby out now" appointment.

But honestly if my back pain comes back I might just try to get acupuncture every week for that, because it helped SO much!!

THANK YOU CRAIG!!!

(Incidentally, Craig is the brother of my friend Steph who I just learned is pregnant . . . so he'll be an uncle in May!)