Priorities

Here's the plan. If no labor before Sunday night, I will go into the hospital to begin an induction. Because my cervix is not at all dilated, we'll begin by "ripening" it, then hopefully move on to pitocin to bring on true labor.

I have some concerns. Shocker.

First, one of the medical variety. Those who have been following along at home will recall a terribly unpleasant encounter I had with the drug misoprostol while trying to resolve my ill-fated first pregnancy (it really ruined my holidays). I did not realize until now that that is one of two drugs they also administer to achieve said cervical ripening. I explained my concerns to my doctor, who said that this is a completely different situation; she said she does prefer misoprostol but will go with cervidil, the other drug, if that is my preference.

I am not sure what to do; this is one of those times in which I struggle with the desire to let go and trust those who are actually trained in medicine to do the medicine, versus heeding the worried voice in the back of my head. I did some googling (I know, I know – never a good plan) and it seems like there are some lingering concerns about miso's safety that do not apply to the cervidil, but that the miso may be more effective at getting the job done. So, do I keep hand-wringing or trust my doctor and go with the surer bet? I'm talking with her tomorrow and hope to have a better gut feeling on this after that conversation (any input appreciated).

My second concern is a much more trivial one. My doctor is in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Monday she is on call for 24 hours, so more likely to be around when things start moving for me. This is why she actually did some wrangling (the L&D floor was pretty booked) to get me in on Sunday night.

But my mother's birthday is on Monday.

Again, those following along at home may recall that my relationship with my mother is not ideal. It's complex and full of angst. It's trying. She can be manipulative and I worry that this is something she could use to "lord over" the baby somehow. It's hard to describe without explaining a lot about her personality and our relationship dynamics (and I pay someone a lot of money to suffer through that kind of detail). Also, I generally would prefer that the baby not have to share his birthday with anyone. It should be his special day.

On the other hand. An induction, particularly a two-step induction as I am having, can literally take days. There is no way of knowing when the baby will actually get here. The doctors seem to agree I shouldn't go past 41 weeks, which is Tuesday (although the MFM doc wanted to do another u/s on Monday, which would mean going in Monday or Tuesday would be okay in her book). I would prefer my own doctor, which would mean waiting until Tuesday night so she is there on Wednesday when things start moving.

But then I saw something tonight about preemies in the NICU and it brought me back to reality a bit – I felt like a complete jackass for caring so much about a shared birthday. There was a time when I just wanted a baby, born in the heat of summer or dead of winter, on a boat or with a goat. And after the scares of this pregnancy, I am lucky that I am having a baby with a birthday at all.

Clearly, I don't want to do anything that could put his health in jeopardy. So I guess the only thing to do is to talk to the doctor about waiting a day or two and get her input. I do have a more legitimate reason to hold off, which is that I've started feeling more crampiness and I think I had genuine, honest-to-goodness contractions today. And it would be nice, after everything we've done to get to this point, to do this part with a little less intervention.