Sunday, March 6, 2011

"I-Day"

March 7th, 2011: Induction-Day

It's been a good weekend with Tia, Tio, Lyla, Jack, Grandma & DD here to distract us from the fact that Roly Poly is running behind schedule. For one thing, it took away all the fears I've had for the past 41 weeks that they wouldn't make it to Cincinnati for the birth and it's kept a very impatient Josie preoccupied as well.

So...here are the details (don't read on if things like a gal's cervix freak you out). At 1pm tomorrow we have an appointment in our doctor's office to have my membranes stripped. (Note: this is the exact thing that we had done at the 40 week mark with Josie and feel like it was the reason for our long and difficult labor with her.) As far as induction techniques go, this is widely considered the least invasive of medical interventions - and just trust me when I say we've tried all the non-medical methods. **Hopefully** this will kick things into gear and we'll shortly be in labor ourselves without further intervention.  It worked with Josie, so we are confident it will.

If not, at 1am tomorrow night (technically 1am Tuesday 3/7/11) we will be officially induced at Good Samaritan Hospital. (Yes, 1am which is crazy but they schedule them every two hours 24/7 - don't get me started on the insanity of this. Likely the topic of a later post.)  And here is where I reach out to all of you for your advice - if things haven't started on their own by 1am, I will have the choice between having my water broken or starting on pitocin. Does anyone out there know which is the lesser of two evils?  (My gut says go for broken water over pit but my water broke with Josie with my fourth contraction and I labored for 18 hours sans water & have heard that labor after broken water is more intense than labor with water. So - I guess the question is: would it be better - knowing that we are going for another natural, unmedicated birth -  to go on low-dose pit with my water intact or to break my water and hope I don't have to ever have the pit? Thoughts?! Experience? Anyone?)

So - that's the "plan".  In other news, please send Josie some love. She's a super-emotional, way-more-sensitive-than-usual, pretty-darn-freaked-out-about-the-whole-thing little girl right now.  Luckily, she's great at communicating with us and we've been able to address some of her fears (which range from thinking cousin Lyla is going to take Roly Poly with her back to Chicago to believing that Lou & I are going to have to stay at the hospital for 100 days).  It's a pretty emotional time for the Schneiders. Thanks for the love.

We will keep everyone posted here and on facebook.  Stay tuned...

(Oh - I forgot to mention - there is actually good reason for this induction tomorrow. I'm not going to actually go into it right now, but I promise you all that you will agree with our decision 100%.)