Well, he didn’t come on the 4th.<\/p>\n
I know due dates aren’t like UPS shipping estimates, and babies don’t come with tracking numbers (although when I mentioned this to my mom, she said “They should get on that!”)—but to be honest, all my expectations were focused on Davy coming early<\/em>. Given how supremely close to bursting I was feeling, it seemed impossible that he could stay in there a full 40 weeks.<\/p>\n Apparently not only was that<\/em> possible, but the Internet assures me that it’s in fact possible he’ll stay in for 41 or 42. If I truly believed this, I would cry: the idea of enduring these “prelabor” contractions on top of the usual full-term pregnancy discomforts for two more weeks<\/em> is so awful that my mind basically refuses to accept it. And then I need to stop and remind myself, again, that it’s far from the worst thing in the world, and as long as Davy is thriving then I can manage whatever I need to manage.<\/p>\n But if we do go to 42 weeks, I’ll be faced with a real problem: the hospital will almost certainly want to intervene at that point, because past 42 weeks there are risks to the baby from remaining in utero. Many doctors want to induce at 40 or 41 weeks, but I’ve picked a hippie-crunchy-friendly hospital where I’m actually attended by midwives rather than doctors, and they tend to be more hands-off about these things. The problem is that I’m a poor candidate for induction because I’ve had a prior c-section, and the drugs they use for induction would increase the risk of my uterine scar tearing open. So although my midwife did seem willing to contemplate the possibility of induction when I talked to her, I’m not entirely sure that they wouldn’t end up just scheduling me for another c-section instead. I really don’t want that: Sam and I are probably going to want a third child, and each c-section you have increases the risks of complications in subsequent pregnancies. Induction itself also increases the risk that labor would end in a section.<\/p>\n Again, c-section is not the worst thing in the world, and I guess I may just have to dwell on that for a while. But I really hope Davy gets a move on—not just because I want him out of me now<\/em> but because if he doesn’t come out on his own, none of my choices are great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, he didn’t come on the 4th. I know due dates aren’t like UPS shipping estimates, and babies don’t come with tracking numbers (although when I mentioned this to my mom, she said “They should get on that!”)—but to be honest, all my expectations were focused on Davy coming early. Given how supremely close to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1094,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions\/1094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}