Time Keeps Moving

We're now about a month and a half away from when they'll try to induce me. With my other pregnancies, I've felt like the first eight months go by pretty quickly, but the last month seems to drag on forever! Since I'm inducing a month early with this pregnancy, I wonder if that'll still be the case. I feel like it won't be since most of the time I am just so big I want to be done with the pregnancy. In this case, I don't think I'll be too huge when that time comes and I don't know if I'll have similar feelings of wanting to be done with the pregnancy.

In one of the Yahoo groups that I'm in, two ladies gave birth recently to babies with anencephaly. The first lady was from Ireland. She went in at 36 weeks to be induced and it didn't work, same thing at 37, 38, 39, and 40 weeks! At 41 weeks, her daughter had her birthday, so she decided to skip that week, and then at 42 weeks, after another failed inducement (does anyone know if that's the right word?) she had a c-section done and her little boy Eoin (pronounced Owen) was born! He lived for 12 hours before he died. I guess he struggled with breathing at first, but then he got the hang of it and didn't struggle again until the last hour of his life. I cried when I read her story. I, along with many others in the group, had been following her journey for the last month as she would go in every week and then be back a day or two later saying that it didn't work again. She's the biggest reason why I asked my doctor about what we will do if the inducement doesn't work for me. But he assured me that it would and that that's never happened to him. I was talking to a lady from Switzerland and she said that they probably have different ways of doing things in Ireland and she thinks that they don't use as many different methods as they do in the U.S. to get labor started. I also know from the lady who had Eoin that they (the doctors) wouldn't give her a c-section until she was 42 weeks along. But I'm so happy for her and the time that she got to spend with her little boy.

The other lady is from Indonesia. She didn't find out until she was 30 weeks along that her baby had anencephaly. Her husband wasn't very supportive to begin with and her doctor would not continue to see her unless she was going to induce labor right then and there. She did not want to do that, so she had to find someone who would take her. I guess she had trouble finding anyone at first, but finally she found a midwife from Australia who was in Indonesia doing an internship or something similar. She agreed to see her, but they had to do a home birth because the hospitals wouldn't take her. I'm not sure of all of the details, but the whole situation just makes me a lot more grateful of how understanding everyone here is. I feel like no matter what it's about, everyone just tells us that as long as it is medically sound, they will support us in what we decide. So the lady from Indonesia really needed to get labor started herself. At around 39 weeks they started doing every single home remedy you can think of to start labor. She was even taking castor oil on a regular basis. But nothing was working. Finally, at 42 weeks, they gave her some cytotech to begin labor and it worked. A day and a half later Carmen (a boy) was born. As for the name, I think of it as a girl's name, which is what they thought they were having. But they weren't too positive because when the doctor saw what was wrong, he ended the ultrasound right then and told her that she needed to induce labor immediately. When she said she didn't want to, he said that he wouldn't see her anymore. She asked him what the gender was and he told her it was a girl. So either he didn't really look and he just told her something or he only looked briefly and saw it incorrectly. So she gave birth to Carmen and hasn't posted anything since he was born (which was last Wednesday).

I feel great joy in reading these mothers' stories. I'm so grateful for the time that they got to spend with their little ones and I continue to pray that that might be the same for us. However, I feel like I'm also preparing myself well to accept whatever the Lord's will be. There is still the chance that Emma could die inside of me and there's always the chance that she will die during labor. While I hope that these do not happen, I know that Heavenly Father will help me have the peace and comfort I need no matter what happens.

Once again, I can't end a post without saying how truly grateful I am for the love, support, and prayers that come from so many people. Thank you!