Excellent timing! Congratulations and best wishes to all for a quick and safe arrival for Maya!
GT
Extremely Big Deal. That action warms my heart.
That sounds like a Very Big Deal to me. I’m thrilled that they can do that!
applause
Awesome. I didn’t think Pennsylvania was so forward thinking.
pennsylvania is odd that way. birth certificate laws are a bit… um… unusual.
The suspense is killing me here. Has Mrs. Briston been in labor this whole time, or was it just a false alarm?
Looks like it was a false alarm. The contractions were a steady three minutes apart for a couple of hours, but by the time we got settled into the hospital, they’d just about stopped.
She’s still 3cm dilated and 90% effaced, and she’s still getting contractions several times an hour, but nothing steady/timeable just yet.
It must be frustrating, but if the early stuff happens over time with less (physical, anyway) drama, that will leave her with more energy for the later parts, right?
Yep, generally labor is a lot like cooking a roast - low and slow is the way to go (and then when it’s ready there’s a flurry of activity and Mom and Aunt Edna start bickering about the right way to make the gravy! Errr…or something like that.)
The exception, of course, is if the mother can’t sleep through the contractions at night. Then doctors are more apt to consider intervening with drugs or stripping of membranes to get things roaring so that she can get some relief. Of course one intervention often leads to another, and that’s the merry-go-round of American obstetrics for ya!
Oh yes, should’ve mentioned that – her membranes were stripped on Saturday.
No drugs…no pitocin…no epidural. This is going to be a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean), so those things can be a very bad idea – there is a slightly elevated chance of uterine rupture when doing a VBAC, but if you have an epidural, you’ll likely not even realize it until it’s too late. Same with pitocin – it can make the contractions too violent. This one is coming out as natural as possible.
:smack: How am I supposed to live vicariously through your wife’s pregnancy if you leave details like THAT out? Arrrgh! MEN!
No, seriously, that explains the “labor” on Saturday and stall-out on Sunday. The membranes didn’t tear (which is good), and the body recovered from the irritation of having them stripped. Maya’s just not ready to come out yet.
'Though I’m surprised she was cleared as a surrogate with a history of c-section. Did she know the parents personally before all this?
Why would that matter? I had an emergency c-section, and then a second planned c-section for baby #2. If women can have multiple c-sections for their own kids, why not for someone else’s kid? I’m not doubting you, btw, just wondering. It seems a silly reason for not clearing someone to be a surrogate.
I think you and your wife are awesome Hal to do such an unselfish thing.
This isn’t going to help my case any then: her membranes were actually stripped at her doctor appointment on Thursday. I could’ve sworn I remember a nurse doing it when we were in the hospital on Saturday, but apparently I’m thinking of when she had them stripped two years ago when our daughter was born.
It’s actually very common for surrogates to have had a c-section. Not a big deal at all anymore. And no, we met M&M through a message board specifically for surrogacy.
I would have assumed that the greater medical (and therefore financial) risks of VBAC or emergency c-section would make a couple’s liability should something go wrong unattractive at best. I was under the impression that one c-section made it more likely for another down the road, although I’m glad we’re past the “once a c-section, always a c-section” days.
OTOH, I guess there aren’t really a surplus of surrogates out there.
Best of luck for when your wife does go into labor, Hal.
Stupid question–what does it mean to strip the membranes?
It matters because there’s a lot of hospitals out there that are too chickenshit to do VBACs.
Never mind that a metric tonload of caesarians are a result of the slippery slope of intervention they’re pimping in the first place.
::d&r::
Not at all stupid – I had no idea until a few days ago. When it was done for my wife’s first pregnancy, I just stood there and nodded my head when the doc said she was currently stripping my wife’s membranes.
Basically, the doc puts a finger inside and slides it around the cervix, separating the membranes around the baby from the cervix. It’s more or less a little trick to help try and kick-start labor.
As for the VBAC/c-section discussion – yes, many doctors strongly advise against trying a VBAC, just as many of them would much prefer a scheduled c-section. The reason for this is simple – laziness. It’s a lot quicker and more convenient for a doc to come in to the hospital on such-and-such a date at such-and-such a time, perform a c-section, and be on with their day. Labor is unpredictable, so many docs push for a c-section.
That’s not to say that all docs have this attitude, but a large portion of them certainly do.
So… still no baby?
Here you get VBAC unless you specifically request a section or there is an indication (breech, v. big baby, placenta praevia) why you shouldn’t deliver normally. It works well.
WhyNot, given that in the US there used to be a tendency (which now seems to have stopped) to go for cesarean anyway, discarding any woman who’s had one seems a bit like discarding any cow that has horns.
Friends of mine had to fight their doctors to be able to have vaginal births, the docs were directly scheduling a cesarean. Kid wasn’t sideways, wasn’t too big, no high-risk pregnancy… it was just “the way we do things here.”
Hal, do we get pics of Maya outside? If M&M don’t mind, of course.