Yesterday, I had my first appointment with the midwives who were my primary prenatal care with Noah, and who hung out and tried to get my labor going just before he came into the world.
Jill and I have been debating whether or not to change baby-delivery medical practices — I like them, and they’re convenient to my work, but the hospital where they deliver is not very convenient to home. I have another appointment, later this week, with an MD who practices at the hospital 5 minutes from our house.
But whether or not to change isn’t the topic of this post.
This post is about the VBAC, or “vaginal birth after c-section” talk that Perky Midwife and I had yesterday.
Basically, her opinion is that I’m not a very good candidate, for 2 reasons. First, and primarily, because of why I had the c/s — “failure to progress.”
In spite of all the assistance medical science could provide to my body, once my body decided that it was time to have that baby, my body didn’t figure out how to go into labor. It hung around ignoring all that cervadil and pitocin, leaking amniotic fluid and half-assedly trying the occasional contraction.
The other reason is the one people usually guess — the extra large baby I was growing in there. I can’t compare to friend Frema and her supersized 11 lb bundle of love, but Noah was a well above average 9 lbs, 7 oz. There’s no reason to think that little Blur won’t be in that same range.
This practice has 2 VBAC policies that Jill and I are supposed to think about. We have until ~30 weeks to decide. First, they won’t let me try for a VBAC past my due date — when I hit 40 weeks, they schedule a c/s. And second, they won’t do the drug cocktail to induce or try to get things moving that they did last time. I can only VBAC if I go into labor on my own.
If I choose to do a scheduled c/s instead, they normally schedule them a week to 10 days before my due date. Any of you who have lived through the last 3 weeks of a full term pregnancy can well imagine how fabulous it sounds to reduce that last gigantic and unwieldy phase, especially if it is at the end of a Georgia summer.
The other thing that I have to appreciate about Perky Midwife is this. According to her original calculations, Blur’s due date is September 11. Fortunately, all of the u/s (including the surprise one yesterday) show Blur measuring a few days ahead of that. So against her normal practice, Perky Midwife recorded my EDD as September 9.
