Baby is fine
September 4th, 2008
Eye yi yi, what a day! Â
I woke up today with what felt like a flu, and I’ve heard that could be an early sign of labor as long as it wasn’t accompanied by a fever. I already had an appointment with my midwife today so we trotted on down there. I was kind of excited, thinking perhaps baby is on the way! Not quite. For one, no dilation, and two, I did have a fever.Â
This was the first appointment Dallas came along for. Before, there seemed no reason to interrupt his day for the 10 minute quickie visit, but now that I’m close to my due date it seemed a good time for him to at least meet the midwife.  Also there might be more interesting stuff going on this time.Â
Upon the normal listening to the baby’s heartbeat, the midwife determined it was a tad irregular – ups and downs, so she sent me across town to the hospital and up to Labor and Delivery so they could monitor the fetal heartbeat on a proper machine.  We waited an hour for a room to open up.  I guess it was an abnormally busy day with some emergencies thrown in for good measure.  The waiting was freaking me out a bit. It was hot everywhere (as I had a fever and its in the 90’s here), but it was absolutely unbearable in the tiny waiting room, so I stood in the hall. I’m not a good waiter – very impatient and worried about being forgotten.Â
Eventually I was hooked up to the fetal heart monitor for about an hour when it was determined mother and baby were just fine. Â phew! Â So that is super good news, but a long day.
They apparently needed 20 consecutive minutes of data.  That was interrupted a couple times, once by the machine running out of paper and once when it stopped detecting a heart beat because the sensors moved. It made me realize how little I’m looking forward to being at the hospital. For some reason everything seems to slow down in a hospital, and there are always so many different people in and out. Now I’m starting to see why people do home births.
Looks like the waiting continues. Â I was hopeful yesterday that the baby was coming soon, but now I’m pretty sure there is quite a bit more waiting involved. Â Boo.
Today was a good dry run though. Â We realized some things:
– car should always be fully gassed up
– car seat should be in the car (not the house)
– labor or complications could start anytime (not just at home in the evening while watching tv)
– wallet should always have at least some cash in it
and extras would be to have my suitcase packed in the car with my birthing ball, snacks, robe, etc.but without that stuff i’d still be fine.
Oh, and after an hour or more in air conditioning and eating ice my fever and flu like symptoms disappeared. Perhaps I was just overheated?  No one knows. Now I have no trouble justifying going to the corner store for a popsicle. Mmm, sounds good!
