37 Weeks- Long Post Alert!

Almost there! I am in awe at how fast pregnancy has gone. Where did the time go?

So on the 9th I went to the OB and she confirmed my suspicion that, although the baby had turned head down at 24 weeks, she was back to her old ways and in breech position. I think this happened around 33 weeks because I noticed I was feeling hiccups much higher in my abdomen. At the appointment the OB did a very short ultrasound and, sure enough, there was that big ol' head right side up (or, shall I say, wrong side up). I am not sure how she came up with the weight estimate, but she thought the baby was somewhere around 6.5 - 7 pounds, which is fairly large for 37 weeks. She seemed very urgent in getting us back to the fetal specialist who did all the major ultrasounds throughout the pregnancy, as he can perform a procedure called "External Cephalic Version" (ECV) which is a fancy way of saying turning the baby from the outside. We went on Friday morning and the first thing they did was an ultrasound to make sure there was no medical reason the baby had turned breech (eg: umbilical cord was restricting movement, not enough amniotic fluid, etc). Turns out the baby just turned because she is actually quite petite and, well, she could. She loves to move and decided she wanted to stare the world in the face right side up. So my OB was quite wrong in her estimation of size. The baby is just over 5 pounds right now. How anything from Paul and I could be referred to as "petite" is beyond me! How did that happen? Back to the visit on Friday. After the ultrasound the doctor decided to try a practice run to see if the Mave might respond to the ECV. He put one hand at the bottom of my abdomen and lifted her up, out of the pelvis while using his other hand to try and manipulate her from the top. He explained that what usually happens is the baby kicks its feet and then uses that motion to turn itself around. Mave did kick her feet, so he thinks there is a possibility she might turn, but he wasn't laying it on as heavy as he does during the full procedure. If you can imagine someone digging their fingers into you as hard as they can and moving them around without releasing pressure, then you can understand why I have black and blue marks on my abdomen. Since the baby has started to descend into the pelvis already, on Monday evening we go into the hospital (they do it there incase the baby goes into distress and they have to do an emergency cesarian, but that only happens about 1% of the time) and he will try the same thing, only with more force, three times, for a minute each time. They offer epidurals for this, but I declined. A needle in my back for 3 minutes of bad pain? No thanks. If the procedure works, we will hope the baby doesn't turn again. It works about 70% of the time. There was some mention from my OB about inducing labor early if she turns so she doesn't go breech again, but we will decline and go with the flow. If the doctor can't turn her then we'll wait until 39 weeks to see if she turns on her own. If that doesn't happen they like to schedule cesarians for breech babies at that time. Supposedly it's safer than going into labor and then having an emergency one. We need to read up on this one some more. I'm not sure if scheduling a c-section a week before the due date is actually going to make much of a difference, and it sort of takes away the opportunity for her to turn on her own until she is ready. You never know when you'll go into labor. We'll do some investigating before agreeing to schedule one at 39 weeks. We'll keep you posted! Keep those fingers and toes crossed!