We don't have a baby, but at least we have a plan.

It's frustrating, but I think we made the right choice. I had a very frank discussion with my OB, and then with Rob, about where we are. At 40 weeks 2 days, I'm not dilated. There is good news, in that the contractions on Saturday/Sunday did bring about some positive changes (I'll leave the details out...). However, if we were to decide to proceed with an induction at this point, there's about an 80% chance that I'd have at least 24 hours of labor that would result in a C-section. I've been hoping to avoid a C-section, just because there has been no reason thus far to go in that direction. The baby is healthy, there's plenty of amniotic fluid, my blood pressure is very good, and neither of us is in any particular distress. I'm not going to lie; I'm hurting and there really is no time when I'm comfortable. I'm exhausted and I have no energy because I don't eat or sleep enough. But that's not distress--that's just late pregnancy.

The plan is to give it another week (OH MY GOD ANOTHER WEEK WHAT THE HELL?!) to give nature a chance to take its course. I'm back at the perinatalogist on Friday, and again on Monday for fetal assessment (check fluid and heartbeat, rotate the tires, etc.) and then to the OB on Wednesday for one last look. At that point, we are going to go to the hospital, either for an induction with a better chance of natural delivery, or for a C-section with the knowledge that we gave this as much time as we safely could. Dr Jameson will not let me go past 41 weeks, because that's far enough past the due date for new and horrible complications to arise.

This was a tough choice. I do love Dr Jameson, because she gave the information and likely outcomes and made sure that we had the knowledge we needed to make our decision. And then once we made the decision, she proceeded without judgment. We could have decided that my discomfort was enough of a factor to change our minds about the C-section and we'd have our daughter in our arms by Saturday night after a labor that probably would be very hard on me. Tempting. Very tempting. But the whole point of this is to have a baby who is healthy, not a delivery that is convenient, and with that in mind, we're willing to give this a bit more time. Not an infinite amount of time, but another week feels like the best path for us.

Ideally, I will go into labor naturally sometime before Wednesday. It could happen. Rob is predicting that my water will break on Sunday afternoon, about 3:30--right before the Chargers game (Christ, we're still talking about football?!)--and we'd be OK with that as well. We could also still end up with a C-section. We'll deal with whatever outcome we get, because in the end, we still get to come home with our girl :).

It's going to be a long week, though.