Piggysnoot

On Tuesday the doctor sent me to have my cervix ripened…pleasant, huh?! It actually only consisted of staying in a hospital bed all day, taking three pills over the course of 9 hours, and going home. No big deal. At my appointment on Monday he said I was still getting puffy and I hadn’t progressed from the 1cm from last week, so he wanted to send me to get this ripening procedure done…the next day. Talk about flipping out. He started out sounding like he was going to do this next week…I ask when he’s wanting me to do this…and he says “oh, probably tomorrow”…like it was no big deal. He did tell me that 10% of people will go into labor right away, but most people go home and start within three days or so. It really wasn’t a big deal…the worst thing was that it was pretty boring and kinda uncomfortable. I took this medicine (cytotec), waited three hours, took another, waited three hours, and took another. The uncomfortable thing about it was that I had to be hooked up to the fetal heart monitor and a contractions monitor. Well wouldn’t you know that if I was comfortable, which was usually on my left or right side, the little Stinker wouldn’t cooperate and the nurse had to keep adjusting the heart monitor.

There was minimal contraction activity by the end of the 9 hours, so I was sent home with the expectation (and hope) that I’ll have to be back in the next few days. I guess I’m feeling the contractions although right now it just feels like period cramps. I asked the nurse how I’d know they were every five minutes for an hour (the point at which I’m supposed to return to the hospital), if I wasn’t even sure I was having them or not. She said, rather ominously, “oh…by the time they’re every five minutes…you’ll know…don’t worry…” I’m not sure if that was supposed to be comforting…or fear inducing…

Stay tuned…we’ll be keeping you updated…