Thankfully, I was not overdue! We got through the last month of pregnancy with few incidents, lots of sorta-labor, and lots of nesting. I kept picking up my iPod to blog only to see a speck of something and go on a cleaning/organizing rampage. Not a particularly fruitful exercise since it always gets undone! I just had so much nervous energy waiting for labor to kick in and trying to settle the details for my older kids.
In the end, I opted to augment things through a mild cervical ripening, trusting that if my body was ready, it would respond. If it wasn't ready, we could go home and wait a few days. However, I was losing weight and there were concerns about GBS and placental health. The induction was very mild overnight and was effective. Since I only had one doctor available , my last two practitioners missed my births, and I tend to go very rapidly at the end while remaining pretty calm, we knew our best bet was to have her when the doctor was definitely going to be in the building. It was so good that we did. Her cord was around her neck, and things went so rapidly that the doc had to be called out of a friend's prenatal appointment! The labor was a bit tougher, but I was prepared for that. They did offer epidurals, but they don't work on me after a back injury, and I coped pretty well. I did manage to avoid pushing until the doctor arrived and suddenly didn't feel like pushing when he did because I had successfully breathed through some awful contractions. I pushed her out with 3 pushes in 2-3 minutes and got to hold her after a minute of blow-by oxygen because she was blue from the cord. In the end, I got what I wanted because I had a manageable birth within a timeframe that worked for my family. Dan said, "there's ideal, and then there's what actually works in our situation." I totally agree. It was the birth experience that worked best for all of us, and I have no regrets.
She is an excellent little nurser, she is content and happy 95% of the time, and Dr. O' tells everyone what a perfect fourth baby she is! She sleeps great in our bed and wakes up around 4am for a feeding that I mostly sleep through. I can cut a 1am feeding by nursing her at 11pm. Her Daddy quits grading then and comes to change her diaper and wakes me to feed her. Those nights she sleeps from 11 to 4. We know how fortunate we are to have this pattern, but we've also paid our dues with IM and Nub, who were terribly fussy babies thanks to colic and ear infections.
We were talking about how if we had been "Babywise" parents, we would be so frustrated with this sweet little girl who naturally cluster feeds during the day and sleeps long periods of time. If we tried to put her on a schedule, we would feel guilty for holding her so much. We would be concerned by how long and how frequently she nurses and be forcing her into a schedule that a book dictated to us. It's asinine. We would be missing out on her natural patterns of waking, eating, and sleeping, and we'd have a grumpy and frustrated baby with grumpy and frustrated parents. My baby is wise enough, thank you!
The other kids are transitioning beautifully, including Nubby, who is more upset to have her Mom-Mom O' gone now. They all love their sister and are so interested in getting to know her. It's such a blessing!
