4 Weeks

Today marks exactly 4 weeks to when we plan to deliver Fiona by C-Section, on September 24th. I will be 36 weeks pregnant and we will go to the hospital to do an amniocentesis to check if she is developed enough to be delivered that day. The test takes a couple of hours, and if all looks okay we will proceed to surgery shortly after! This is essentially what we did when we had Bella, only I was 37 weeks pregnant with her.

There is the possibility that Fiona won't be ready, and we'll have to wait and retest anywhere from 2-7 days later. That would be unfortunate and inconvenient due to everyone's schedules and family that is flying in, Timm taking off work etc. but I feel pretty confident that the 24th will be the day. Even though Bella was 'ready' to be born, she still had 'wet lungs' due in part to her C-Section birth and she had to stay in the nursery until the last day we were in the hospital. She had to receive extra oxygen through a tube and have monitors hooked up to watch her heartbeat. She was fine, but it meant that I had to go to the nursery to see her and feed her, and of course the monitor made me spastic because it would alarm for all sorts of reasons, most of them due to positioning.

This week we start doing weekly non-stress tests to watch her and monitor how things are going. I had to do this with Bella as well, and it was time-consuming and boring, but that was all. Now that I have Bella, I have to tote her along with me, and that is going to prove difficult, I'm sure. Our last regular appointment was at 8:15 so we could get in and out, or so I thought, but we were still there for an hour and a half! Bella's a really good trooper, but we still had a couple of tantrums and it's hard to entertain her for that long, especially in the cramped quarters of the exam room. Friday we go in at 8:30 for the NST (non-stress test) and then I have a regular appt. at 10, so that alone guarantees we will be there for a minimum of 2 hours, although I'm betting more on 3 or so. Not looking forward to that, and once a week too. Another doctor suggested that we do the NSTs twice a week, but luckily I haven't heard that again! Plus, my doctor's office is a good 25 minutes away so I am gas-conscious.
I know these last 4 weeks are going to fly- I can't even tell you where the last 4 went! It's simultaneously exciting and scary. Our lives will never be the same, our family may be completed, various ills and discomforts will be relieved and substituted with new and different ones, I will trade one kind of fatigue for another, my concerns will be slightly alleviated but also transferred to a new set of worries, and I will finally have 2 girls by my side to validate to the world the 2 daughters I have kept in my heart for the last 3 years. I will be a mother of 3, but at last parenting 2 of them.