SCH is GONE!
Good news from this morning's anatomy scan! First, new baby is still looking very healthy, with all measurements falling between 19 and 20 weeks (today I am 19w2d by LMP, 19w5d by early ultrasound/OPKs). All measurements on both heart and brain look great, the latter reassuring since I spent a month in Zika-land and returned only 8 weeks before conception. We saw her open her mouth and swallow/yawn, wave her arms around, and otherwise look generally pissed off that the tech kept pushing on her with the wand. Again, her girl bits looked like girl bits, so we're feeling quite confident that we should go ahead and pick a name for her. Also, the tech couldn't find any remnant of the SCH, so I guess I'm cleared to do things like yoga again! I'm going to wait to actually sign up for a class until I talk to my midwife next week (and I still might opt out of all down dogs, eek), but maybe I can now feel safe enough to empty the (literal) mountain of pads out of my purse and work bag, since I was stockpiling them in case of a catastrophic bleeding emergency - which looks like it won't be happening, thank goodness!
So here we are, nearing halfway through. I am still a little anxious, although way better than I was, and I still feel like I have a loooooong way to go (which I do) before new baby is actually full term and out. However, I am now feeling confident enough to really put some thought into the birth. I've spent the last few weeks researching VBACs, especially since I received a veritable pile of VBAC consent forms from the hospital that are a) quite detailed, and b) super scary. I bought some books, but I feel like all of them want to force me into feeling "traumatized" by my c-section and view a VBAC as some kind of healing experience.
Well, three years out, I definitely don't feel traumatized, angry at my care team, or broken - not even a little bit. I had to do some research after the fact to assess my labor issues, but in the end, I mostly feel grateful that we had such a good birth outcome given the phenomenal clusterfuck it turned out to be. Contrary to all the hippie assertions that I screwed myself because I got an epidural, none of the book/blog/whatever authors seem to understand that just because there's a correlation between epidurals and c-sections, it doesn't mean that epidurals cause c-sections, especially in every case. In my case, I think it was entirely a situation where malpresentation caused BOTH the epidural and the c-section. In hindsight, I can pinpoint the exact day, at ~37 weeks, when Maya disengaged from my pelvis and rolled from anterior to posterior. She spent the next 5 weeks that way, and it is 100% unsurprising that my big, late, posterior baby then entered my cervix brow-first. It is 100% unsurprising that the bad (and very high) position meant that labor didn't start when it should, and 100% unsurprising that brow presentation labor was uber dysfuctional when my body decided to attempt expelling the uncooperative baby anyway. Malpresentation = dysfunctional labor = uncommon amounts of pain = epidural - which actually gave me a much better birth outcome than I would have gotten otherwise, since it slowed down my labor and got my contractions into a normal pattern. Thanks to the epidural, I made it to 10cm dilated and pushed the baby nice and hard to get her *extra* stuck in my pelvis...which although it sucked at the time, it actually gives me higher odds of successfully completing a VBAC this time around than if I'd failed to progress further than 3cm, which was definitely the course I was on with dysfunctional labor.
In my opinion, most VBAC proponents seem to be stuck in the "vaginal birth at any cost" mindset. Myself, I'm in the "best birth outcome for mama and baby" mindset. Granted, best birth outcomes are highest in uncomplicated vaginal births, no question, so we absolutely have overlap! However, I'm never going to be completely committed to a VBAC "no matter what," as I think there are absolutely situations in which c-sections are the right way to go and no one should be ashamed of that. I am certainly going to try for a VBAC, since major abdominal surgery was fucking terrible. But considering that this is my absolute last pregnancy, I'm ok if it ends in another c-section in the event of another clusterfuck (of any variety). I just want a healthy baby.
So those are my thoughts so far on that - we'll see if they change as I get closer to delivery. But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can do everything "right," and things can still proceed in a totally surprising way!
And that's the update from the North Country. I leave you with one cute photo of Maya setting up our presidential election Clinton/Kaine yard sign. We've donated practically her entire college fund for the year to the HRC campaign, but this is the scariest election I've ever witnessed! We're doing what we can to ensure the outcome that will best serve Maya's future :)
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| Yay, new baby! We are so excited for you! |
So here we are, nearing halfway through. I am still a little anxious, although way better than I was, and I still feel like I have a loooooong way to go (which I do) before new baby is actually full term and out. However, I am now feeling confident enough to really put some thought into the birth. I've spent the last few weeks researching VBACs, especially since I received a veritable pile of VBAC consent forms from the hospital that are a) quite detailed, and b) super scary. I bought some books, but I feel like all of them want to force me into feeling "traumatized" by my c-section and view a VBAC as some kind of healing experience.
Well, three years out, I definitely don't feel traumatized, angry at my care team, or broken - not even a little bit. I had to do some research after the fact to assess my labor issues, but in the end, I mostly feel grateful that we had such a good birth outcome given the phenomenal clusterfuck it turned out to be. Contrary to all the hippie assertions that I screwed myself because I got an epidural, none of the book/blog/whatever authors seem to understand that just because there's a correlation between epidurals and c-sections, it doesn't mean that epidurals cause c-sections, especially in every case. In my case, I think it was entirely a situation where malpresentation caused BOTH the epidural and the c-section. In hindsight, I can pinpoint the exact day, at ~37 weeks, when Maya disengaged from my pelvis and rolled from anterior to posterior. She spent the next 5 weeks that way, and it is 100% unsurprising that my big, late, posterior baby then entered my cervix brow-first. It is 100% unsurprising that the bad (and very high) position meant that labor didn't start when it should, and 100% unsurprising that brow presentation labor was uber dysfuctional when my body decided to attempt expelling the uncooperative baby anyway. Malpresentation = dysfunctional labor = uncommon amounts of pain = epidural - which actually gave me a much better birth outcome than I would have gotten otherwise, since it slowed down my labor and got my contractions into a normal pattern. Thanks to the epidural, I made it to 10cm dilated and pushed the baby nice and hard to get her *extra* stuck in my pelvis...which although it sucked at the time, it actually gives me higher odds of successfully completing a VBAC this time around than if I'd failed to progress further than 3cm, which was definitely the course I was on with dysfunctional labor.
In my opinion, most VBAC proponents seem to be stuck in the "vaginal birth at any cost" mindset. Myself, I'm in the "best birth outcome for mama and baby" mindset. Granted, best birth outcomes are highest in uncomplicated vaginal births, no question, so we absolutely have overlap! However, I'm never going to be completely committed to a VBAC "no matter what," as I think there are absolutely situations in which c-sections are the right way to go and no one should be ashamed of that. I am certainly going to try for a VBAC, since major abdominal surgery was fucking terrible. But considering that this is my absolute last pregnancy, I'm ok if it ends in another c-section in the event of another clusterfuck (of any variety). I just want a healthy baby.
So those are my thoughts so far on that - we'll see if they change as I get closer to delivery. But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can do everything "right," and things can still proceed in a totally surprising way!
And that's the update from the North Country. I leave you with one cute photo of Maya setting up our presidential election Clinton/Kaine yard sign. We've donated practically her entire college fund for the year to the HRC campaign, but this is the scariest election I've ever witnessed! We're doing what we can to ensure the outcome that will best serve Maya's future :)
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| We're with her! |
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