Ready or Not, Here He Comes (part 1)

So because of my gestational diabetes I had to go to the doctor twice a week for fetal heart rate monitoring.  So twice a week I would take a long lunch to spend 30 minutes in a small room listening to what sounded like horses galloping (or at least the coconut horse hooves like on Monty Python).  At the start of each appointment the nurse would take my vital signs.  My blood pressure had slowly been increasing and the doctor ordered a test to see if I had preeclampsia.  The results came back normal, but the doctor was still concerned so she put me on bed rest effective immediately in hopes that she could buy me another two weeks.  I was scared that the baby was possibly only two weeks away, but I was also worried about the time I would be off work.  I didn’t have enough leave for the time I would be taking to recover from having the baby, let alone being home before the baby came.

My blood pressure did go down slightly with bed rest, but not enough.  At 37 weeks the doctor ordered another preeclampsia test.  I was at my regular Friday appointment when the doctor came in the room to say that my labs came back and I did have preeclampsia and she wanted to induce me either today since her office mate was on call this weekend or on Tuesday when she would be there.  She told us (Jeremy came to the appointments with me) to take a minute and think about it and left the room.  Understandably I was upset.  I just spent the past two weeks on the couch only getting up to go to the bathroom, make myself a sandwich or go to the bedroom and I still ended up with preeclampsia.  I calmed down a little bit and we decided to go in on Tuesday not only because my doctor would be there, but because I wanted a little more time.

I told the doctor my decision when she came back in the room and proceeded to finish my time on the monitor.  When the nurse came in to make sure there was enough of a reading on the strip, she ripped it off and said she was going to run it by the doctor.  She’d never said that before.  The doctor came in a third time and said that there were some decelerations of the baby’s heart beat and she wanted me to go to the hospital tonight to get induced.  I had barely come to terms with having the induction on Tuesday and now she wanted me to go to the hospital tonight.  My head was spinning and I felt like the wind got knocked out of me.  She told me that she would call ahead to the hospital.  The doctor figured they wouldn’t start the induction until after 7:00 when the shift changed so I had enough time to go home, get my bags and something to eat first.  I was crying when I left the office and didn’t stop when I called my mom on the way home.  She was going to meet us at our house to pick up Wally since she was going to watch him while I had the baby.