27 Weeks

I’m exactly 27 weeks today. So it was a nice treat to mark the day with a morning visit to my midwife’s office and to be able to have J and the twins come along. They have some toys and books for little ones but the kids were in a subdued mood this morning (think it was the lulling bus ride on Mom and Dad’s laps) so they mostly held onto J’s legs and watched everything that was going on. They only broke their silence for the offer of stickers at the end of the appointment.

It says something good about you as a medical professional when you have stickers in your desk drawer. Just saying.

Everything looked good, baby kicked lots and is measuring on target. It’s that time to head in for a gestational diabetes test (overnight fast, big cup of crazy sweet sugar juice, sit and do nothing for two hours). Heart rate was around 140 and my blood pressure is normal, which I always like to hear since it became a factor with the twins. Soren was enthralled once again with the little machine that listens to the baby, though I’m sure he is wondering what kind of baby sounds like a helicopter.

I let me midwife know that I may have found a doula to join the team and plan to meet with her soon to see if it’s a good fit. I had initially hoped to have one but didn’t want to go through the interviewing process and felt many of the ones I had come across were cost prohibitive. But at a recent event I happened to meet a woman who I discovered was a doula and with whom I share similar world views and philosophies on birth, how your personal faith beliefs are a part of that experience, and what I had hoped a doula could provide in that way. It just seemed like I was suppose to meet this person and for me to feel confident enough in such a new relationship to request to know more told me I was pretty comfortable with her. So we’ll meet and we’ll see what comes of it, but even telling my midwife today and hearing that not only is she happy for me, but that they actually love when a doula is present because it makes their job even easier, I felt really good about the whole thing. I’ll keep you posted on what develops.

Besides a possible additional support person, I’ve also been referred to the Best Birth Clinic at BC Women’s Hospital for a consultation with an OB. Having had a c-section in the past I qualify for this resource that is being provided in an attempt to reduce the number of c-sections being performed at Women’s and to help prepare me from a medical standpoint for what a VBAC involves. My midwife said the OB would want to talk to me about why the extra monitoring will be encouraged, why they may think it’s wise to put in an IV port just in case, and what other things I can be expecting and participating in to give me the best chance of staying out of the OR. I’m excited to learn and optimistic that it will be beneficial, even in the event that I need to make a decision about a c-section.

My midwife recommended again that I get into a childbirth class but this is the one thing I am just not sure how to make happen. It’s either going to be finding childcare once a week over a longer period of time, or for a whole day, or going without J, or paying way too much to have someone come to our house. I am just not sure what I’m going to do, though I do agree that it would be valuable. Guess I’ll have to research my options, maybe there’s such thing as an online course? Distance learning for childbirth. That’s my kind of thing.

I also got some good tips for dealing with my leg numbness and breathing, as well as soreness. So I’m currently walking around the house with a big wide scarf tied around my hips and I’m only okay with this look because it’s working.

So that’s the scoop on that front. My next steps are to 1. figure out a childbirth class that we can manage, 2. meet with my potential doula and 3. pick up the books I want to read from the library. Which means I’ll have to return some and pay my fines for keeping them too long on account of all these gorgeous days for being outside and not in a library.

27 weeks. Midwife appointments every 3 weeks instead of 5. We’re getting somewhere now baby.