Personal news!

I don't usually post news about myself on this blog. I usually reserve it for my political and religious rants. Still, I thought I might give my few readers an idea of what's going on with me, as well as a good reason why I haven't said much here lately.

As some of you might know, I am pregnant and due April 4th, though the baby might come earlier or later, as babies generally do. I have the feeling it'll be by the end of March, as she's been dropping a little over the past few days. Yes, the baby is a girl.

At my 35 week appointment she turned out to still be breech. The doctor had some concern, but not a great deal, as she still had room to turn around. When she was still breech at 36 weeks, though, he gave me my options. I could wait and see if she was going to turn. If she turned, all would be normal, but if she remained breech, I would have to have an emergency Cesarean. I could, if I chose, simply schedule a Cesarean right then and there. His third option, though, perked my interest. He proposed we simply turn the baby.

The ECV, or External Cephalic Version, used to be a common way of trying to deal with breech babies, especially before c-sections became safer than a breech delivery for the baby. Recently, as the U.S. and Britain have tried to cut down on their prominent (many other civilized countries say 'excessive') use of the c-section, the procedure has been coming back into vogue. My doctor tends to be on the leading edge of any and all technologies that reduce or eliminate the need of heavy medical intervention.

So I agreed to the procedure, and it was done last week. At the hospital, under careful monitoring, he rhythmically pressed and rubbed on my belly to coax the baby (without forcing her) to do a 180. It's done at a hospital because there is a 1% chance that the procedure will break your water and force you into labor. Luckily, my doctor is very good at his work. When she didn't turn, he had my bed tipped backwards with my feet in the air and tried again. This time she went for it. He told me that the way I was shaped and the way she was lying, she probably didn't have the room to turn her own self, which was good news. It meant she probably couldn't turn back.

Today I went for a fetal monitoring appointment. Now that this ECV has been done, they want to monitor her weekly just to make sure everything's alright. There is always the possibility that turning the baby has bent or crimped the umbilical cord or damaged the placenta somehow, and that would show up as distress in the baby's heartbeat. She has been verified as of today's appointment to be entirely healthy, and a short ultrasound confirmed that she not only has not turned back to breech, but is dropping into head-down position and can't go back now.

So some time in the next few days, weeks, or possibly up to one month (but not beyond), I am going to go into labor, go to the hospital, and have this baby. Thanks to my doctor's wisdom (and my own willingness to go along with something that hurt nearly as much as labor), it should be a regular, low-risk birth. Needless to say, that will result in another long period in which I will not be writing on political or religious matters. Until then, you might still hear from me! But if you don't, I have the feeling you will no longer be wondering why.