Eight Days Overdue

It's Tuesday, December 22. The baby was due last Tuesday. But no sign of labor yet. After those two initial bouts of contractions, nothing, despite walking, squatting and sex. He's been doing some serious baby calisthenics and acrobatics in the womb, my lower back has been hurting a lot and I can feel things moving and spreading in my pelvic floor for the last few weeks, but no contractions.

Today, I'm scheduled to go to the hospital for an induction. I had mixed feelings about it when we scheduled it last Tuesday at the last doctor's visit, and still have mixed feelings about it. I've been skirting them under the rug this entire week because I truly believed that the baby would initiate labor on his own so I didn't trully have to address them head on. The prospect of the actual induction wasn't really real, until now. It's about two hours before we need to head to the hospital and no signs of labor yet.

I'm ambivalent about the induction for several reasons:

-I don't like the idea of this birth being a scheduled, predetermined event. It feels like a forced extraction, almost akin to scheduling a tooth extraction, not a natural process.

-I don't like the idea of me arbitrarily deciding on the baby's date of birth. (Although at least I picked 22, which is one of my favorite numbers, ever since Maca and I started playing the lucky 22 and unlucky 33 game in our childhood.)

-By controling the course of events now, I feel like I've actually lost control.

-If it's ultimately the baby who sets the birthing process in motion when he's ready, is this baby ready? What if he's not?

-Is it really needed? Or should I wait a few more days for the baby to arrive on his own? The entire "yoga" midwife-y crowd from my yoga class would be aghast that I'm having an induction after only being one week over due. A big part of me agrees with them. But another part of me is beginning to freak out why this baby isn't coming yet. Is everything OK with him? They would say that it's not unusual for a baby to be a week or two weeks late.

-If the baby isn't ready, will this induction end up in a C-section? It's not that I'm afraid of a C-section in a case of emergency, but I would really like not to have to end up needing one. And according to information I've read and heard, the incidence of needing a C-section as a result of an induction is higher because the baby and the body aren't ready for the process yet. (I'm not sure what the stats are with overdue babies.) But if I don't have this induction, and the baby continues to grow inside my womb, what if he gets too big for me to push him out and I end up needing a C-section anyway? It's apparently a possibility. Two weeks ago, the doctor said the baby is probably in the high 7 lbs range, whereas last week she said he's probably in the mid-7 lbs range. In other words, she wasn't 100 percent sure. So it's possible that the baby is larger or smaller. Since Ivan was 8.5 lbs when he was born, and this pregnancy has been pretty much similar to Ivan's and I've gained the same amount of weight, I assume that the baby's weight will be close to Ivan's. I've also been more relaxed in terms of food this time and have been eating a much more fatty and sugary dessert-laden diet, so I fear the baby is bigger than Ivan was.

-If this were my first baby, maybe I would feel more open to the need for induction. But since Ivan's birth, no matter how long and painful, proceeded relatively naturally and was set in motion on his due date, I really haven't been mentally prepared for this.

I'm beginning to understand all those women, including Angela, who feel that they were cheated out of birthing. This is not how I wanted this process to go, nor did I think this would happen in a million years.

It also shows me that no matter how and how much one prepares for the pregnancy and birth, being pregnant and giving birth is still a wild card.

I was glad, however, that I didn't go into labor over the weekend during the snow storm. That would've been awful.