Week 36: Turn, Baby, Turn! (Natural Birth-o)

Today I had my non-stress test (due to being an old lady at 40). Which was a mis-nomer. It was one of the most stressful OB visits of my pregnancy.

The nurse couldn't find the heartbeat. I hadn't felt the baby move in several hours, so when she finally found a faint, relatively slow heartbeat (114), I thought it was probably mine. Then she said, "Well, the baby is moving, anyway. She's making me chase her." Whew!

She called for backup and a more experienced RN came in. She found the heartbeat right away. Then she put the heartrate monitor on me, secured around my waist with a velcro strap, and another strap held on a monitor to look for contractions (I apparently had one while sitting there). She said, "OK, now I'm going to put you to work. Every time you feel a movement, press the 'Mark' button."

I was on the machine for a while but wasn't feeling any movement. It had been about 5 hours since I'd eaten (due to severe heartburn all morning) so she gave me a juicebox (which spilled all over me because I was fully reclined). The juice got Sarrazine moving, though, and the movements corresponded correctly with increased heart rate, so that was awesome! The nurse was very pleased.

However, the bad part is, she thinks the baby has moved to a transverse breech position again (lying sideways, her head to the left of my belly button and her butt to the right). That is exactly how I feel like she is, based on the location of her hiccups that morning and her butt sticking out to my right side.

The doctor never did come see me, but she spoke with him and he said that I'll need to get an ultrasound next week and if she's still breech, they won't remove the cerclage..... They'll either try again the following week, or they'll just schedule a c-section right then and there! ARGH. C-Section is NOT part of my birth plan! But if she's breech, they have no choice. They didn't seem to offer the possibility of manually moving her, but I've heard that's horribly painful, so maybe just getting gutted like a fish is the better option....