Amelia’s Birth Story: Part 2

(Begin with Part 1.)

On Wednesday, August 24th, Tim and I drove to my last midwife’s appointment. At this point I had been pregnant for 40 weeks and 2 days, much longer than I had ever expected to be carrying this baby.

My midwife, Dana, said she too was surprised that I had made it through the previous weekend without going into labor. When I asked if there was anything we could do to help the process along, she volunteered to strip my membranes or separate the bag of water from the cervix. She said that it could possibly help contractions start or could simply make me very crampy and uncomfortable until labor started on its own.

At this point I was already uncomfortable so I figured we might as well give it a try.

After Dana performed the procedure she told us that she didn’t really know if it would help since my bag of water was almost separated from the cervix already. However, within a few minutes I started having mild cramps so I held out hope that this would be what I needed to send my body into full fledged labor.

Before leaving our appointment we scheduled a non-stress test to be completed at the hospital on the following Monday (41 weeks). We also discussed the midwives’ on-call hours with Dana and decided that we’d go to the birthing center the following Wednesday to be induced. This way we’d be guaranteed of having a midwife on call for a full 36 hours after the induction.

Throughout the rest of the day, the cramps that had started out very mild remained completely manageable. At the end of the day I was a little disappointed to be going to bed still pregnant and I prayed that I’d go into labor on my own before having to be induced the next week.

Continue on with Part 3…

…you may also want to read Emahry’s, Jonathan’s, and Eliya’s birth stories. They are all so different, proving that each pregnancy, labor and delivery is completely unique…just like each child.