T-48 Hours

On our weekly doctor's appointment yesterday, we had a cervical exam done and found out that Amber is already 4 cm dilated and 90% effaced. Most women don't reach this point until after a few hours of active labor. The doctor was very happy and said this indicates very good chances that the baby will come naturally without the need for medical intervention (e.g. inducement). She seemed pretty confident that the baby would come before Friday, probably within 48 hours.

To speed things along even further, the doctor "stripped the membranes" which is a manual procedure where the doctor physically separates the membranes containing the amniotic waters from the cervix. This is believed to stimulate the release of natural hormones (oxytocin) from the brain that precipitate birth. Oxytocin is related to pitocin, which commonly used in hospitals to speed-up or to stimulate a stalled labor. Pitocin has a bit of a bad rap (at least in the lay community) because its associated with painful births or complications that ultimately end in a C-section.

Given how dilated Amber is already, with no contractions or other symptoms, and also the fact that her mother delivered her three kids *very* quickly, the doctor told us to come in to the hospital as soon as the contractions are regular and 10 minutes apart. (which is sooner that normal).

Unfortunately, there was also a bit of bad news in this visit. As part of routine tests we take every week, we discovered that Amber's blood pressure was high (I think around 130/100) and she was dropping some protein in her urine. These are both signs of a common condition called preeclampsia. This is a relatively new condition (discovered around the 90s, I think), and it can come on very suddenly--Amber is checked every week, and was fine last time. Preeclampsia can be fatal in rare instances, so the medical community are naturally very cautious with it, but in the vast majority of cases it can be managed with little trouble. The most likely treatment will be inducement if the baby doesn't come quickly on it's own.

To determine for certain whether Amber has preeclampsia or not, the doctors want to run a more involved urine test, which requires Amber to capture all her urine for a full 24-hours and turn it in for testing. Which I'm sure will be a fun process. They also took a blood sample and are running some tests on that. At the rate we're going, the baby may come on it's own before we even get the test results back, at which point the whole thing would be moot.

I went ahead and took off work for the remainder of the week so I could be home and ready to go whenever we need. We were a little panicked when the doctor first told us the news (I'll never forget the look on Amber's face-- ha ha!), but now we're really excited.