Oh the difference a day makes

Today was meant to be a nice relaxing day, starting the natural induction protocols and heading out of town to the beach for the day. Well, the herbs didn’t go down so well and K felt really sick almost straight away, which when followed by a 45 minute drive down a windy road wasn’t great at all. We spent some time at the car, but barely getting out of the car – it was a beautiful day and I took some photos, but K was feeling steadily worse so we headed back home.

Around 3pm we phoned the midwife, who happened to be just around the corner so she came straight around. She monitored both K and baby, K’s bp was up a bit but not too bad, and baby’s heartbeat, movements etc were fine. But then came the Big Talk. K’s blood sugars have been getting out of control the last few days, normally if they were a little high she could tell exactly why – white bread instead of brown, or having a nap instead of going for a walk. But this time there doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to it. The sickness could be to do with the herbs, it could be a tummy bug, it could be pre-labour, it could be the diabetes – we just don’t know. She is feeling a little better tonight,but she is still really exhausted and has been pretty irritable the last few days as well which again could be a sign of the diabetes.

So we’ve had to make the tough call, as much as we’ve planned, hoped, dreamed and fought for it we’ve decided that a home birth is now out of the question. With her sugars fluctuating, increasingly feeling worse and by our midwife’s own admission she doesn’t know enough about the diabetes to feel comfortable advising us on it now that it’s not controlled. There’s just too many questions.

We’ve also decided that there’s no real benefit to waiting it out a few more days, it’s 40 weeks tomorrow which was the medical experts d-day all along. With that in mind, we’ve got an appointment at the hospital at 9am tomorrow. We’re  not exactly sure what that will entail, but we’re assuming induction and taking our bags because we’re pretty sure that they won’t be letting us leave without baby. We’re continuing the acupressure and hoping that the literature is right and that the prior acupressure will help things along and reduce the need for more interventions than necessary.

It’s not what we’d hoped for, obviously, but we’d always said that if there was a real medical reason not to birth at home we would pay attention. And with the symptoms of the last few days, there is now a very definite risk to both K and Sprocket having hypoglycemic issues during or after the birth. So this is us, paying attention.

(omg Sprockie’s going to be here real soon!!!)