A lot has transpired since I last wrote here. I'm 37 weeks pregnant now which means I have about 3 weeks to go, theoretically. The Baby had finally turned head down, the way it should be for delivery, and then there was the last two weeks.

I've been feeling a lot of activity--kind of an excessive amount. It hasn't been too comfortable either since the body parts are getting larger and my belly is stretched taut, I mean almost snapping taut. I didn't believe that it could be more so than last time, but it's about three times worse and my skin will forever be showing it. Sigh.

Anyway, we were pleased that the baby had finally turned down to prepare for his/her grand entrance (or exit, however you look at it). Then we got into a little fender bender where we were rear-ended in stop-and-go traffic. It really wasn't a big deal, but we had to go to the hospital since I am 9 months pregnant and all. After being sent to a second hospital, sent all over the place to find the emergency room and finally directed to the maternity unit, we waited another couple of hours to be seen. They made us sit there for a few more hours while I was given an unnecessary series of treatments including two hours of fetal monitoring, an hour of IV fluids, an internal exam and an ultrasound. Everything was fine. The baby was head down, no bleeding, no signs of trauma.

We carried on with business as usual, confident that all we had left to do now was wait. We had a regularly scheduled appointment a couple of days later where we were offered more fetal monitoring. The doctor must have forgotten or the nurse did or something so after a good bit of waiting we decided it must not have been that important and left.

So we arrived at last week's doctors appointment in good spirits. Our main concern was presenting our birth plan and reviewing it. We did that and were feeling good about the impending birth. Then came the internal exam, my most favorite part of any checkup.

"Hmm," said the doctor.
My face dropped. This is never the reaction you want to hear with 4 weeks left to go.
"Is something wrong?"
She poked further inside.
"Ouch!" I said.
"I know," she replied, "I just need to feel here for a minute."
She removed her hand and peeled off her gloves.
"Well," she started, "I don't feel a head. I feel some smaller parts."
"I can tell you that I have noticed a lot of activity and larger bumps than last time I was pregnant."
"Yeah," she said airily. "I'm gonna have them do a sonogram today just to make sure. You can get dressed."

I sat there for a moment in my oversized paper towel, taking it all in. I looked at my husband, both of us with knitted eyebrows. "Crap," was all I could think. I knew something seemed weird.

Yes, there it was on the sonogram: baby butt down, head up. I knew what that meant. It meant they would want to perform a C-Section. I knew it meant worry and anxiousness, surgery and long recovery. I knew it meant that I would probably not get to hold my baby when it was born and that I might have some complication or trouble healing that would interfere with breastfeeding. I knew it meant I would be shaking in my boots wondering whether the anesthesia would trigger some strange relapse of my childhood epilepsy. I tried to hold them back, but as soon as that technician left, the tears were rolling down my cheeks and the snot was enlarging my nose.

We talked a little more with the doctor and found out that not only was the baby breech (again)
but that I have an anterior placenta, meaning that it's attached to the inside of my belly instead of the back wall of the amniotic sac (as it shows here).

That means having an external cephalic version (where they numb up your uterus, grab the baby's head from the outside and turn him/her into the pelvis) would be much riskier and ill advised.

So what have I been doing then? I have been: to the accupuncturist to burn mugwort next to my pinky toes, sitting with baroque music piping into my pubic area whilst holding a heat pack below and an ice pack under my breasts, laying on my back at a 45 degree incline to raise my hips in the air above my head, putting my head down low and raising my butt in the air while on my stomach side and trying to sit as staunchly upright as possible at all times.

I remain optimistic that the baby might turn before delivery. I'm doing what I can to encourage him/her to do so. In the meantime, I'm trying not to sleep all day long because my almost three-year-old needs her mommy still. I know it's not the end of the world if I end up with a c-section--lots of people do. But for me, it would be a very disappointing end to a long pregnancy. However it may transpire, I will soon get to meet the fiesty little one who's already made an indelible mark on our lives.