Tobin's Birth Story - Part One

A little preface to share: I started working on this thing like week #2. But I got way out of control. Like I was writing a novella, folks. To illustrate, the full version I had previously started had the birth story beginning over two years ago…and while it did in fact make sense to the story, I decided to err on the side of brevity (and I know you’re laughing because the length of this piece doesn’t seem to reflect such an effort to be brief, but trust me, I spared you!). So, with that being said…here we go!

Monday, January 30^th –

Lose mucous plug. Note to readers: If the word mucous plug makes you unsettled or you feel as though I’m sharing too much information, I recommend you avoid the rest of this story. Okay, so where were we? Oh, yes. My mucous plug was lost – hooray, me! Or not so much, because as I would learn, apparently I only lost part of it, as I had a mucous wall. Seriously. I must have housed the mucous wall of China in there.

Tuesday, January 31^st –

Head to my doctor’s appointment, at this point we had shelved the c-section talk because while our little guy was still tracking on the bigger side, my doctor felt really confident in our ability to go for a vaginal delivery, as did I. When I asked her what she thought he would weigh or how big he would be and she gave me the answer of “9-ish.” And I smiled and said, “Okay, we can do this!” At this point, I was all systems go. I was 90% effaced and nearly 2 cm dilated. Things were progressing! As any full-term pregnant lady would likely agree, at this point in the game you are just.so.ready. There are no words for how ready I was to get the show on the road. AND I was just so proud of myself – I lost my mucous plug! Now, I knew this could mean nothing, but you so hope it does.  

So after the usual of checking our vitals – which all looked great, I jumped at the chance to have my membranes stripped. After the procedure my doctor told me that I had 24-48 hours for it to work IF it would work at all to help move things along. 

Then she said, “We need to talk about you going past your due date.” And as soon as the words came out of her mouth I was ready for it, in fact I had even mentioned to Ty on our way to the appointment - that we were definitely on track to having the induction talk. Given our past conversations about his projected size, I knew she wasn’t going to let me go much past my due date.

Knowing how likely this conversation would be, I had already proactively been doing everything I could to avoid it and help move labor along – I was on a rigorous schedule of raspberry leaf tea, evening primrose oil, and Dr. Christopher’s Birth Prep herbs. I was a walking herbivore at that point. I was so VIP at the local vitamin/naturopathic store.

Before we left that appointment, it was decided. We were going to wait and see what might happen over the remainder of that week – but I was on the books for an induction on Monday, February 6^th at 7 am.

Friday, February 3^rd –

Membranes stripped for second time. Again we had 24-48 hours for it to “work.” But given the outcome of the last effort, I was doubtful. Depressingly, I was even slightly less effaced than my previous visit because the little guy had actually moved up higher – he was fighting descent at all costs! There is nothing more discouraging than going backwards, let me tell ya!

Out of curiosity I asked my doctor if she happened to be the on-call doctor that weekend, and she wasn’t. Of course! As we said goodbye you could tell we both were fairly certain it wouldn’t matter if she was on-call or not and that we were going to see one another first thing on Monday am when I checked in for my induction.

To be continued…