always better to know the why
Sooooo I'm still pregnant. But it's not my fault.
I went for a walk this evening with my husband and while I was walking, I started feeling contractions. We tried to get a hold of the on-call for my practice, but couldn't--paging wasn't picking up. Since we were close to the hospital, we decided to just walk there and explain in person.
When I got to the hospital, the contractions stopped. But I got examined. The doctor found that I had a "hard" part of my cervix, consistent with having scar tissue on the cervix. This is probably attributable to the internal tearing I experienced with my previous labor. The doctor did some cervical massage to try to soften the tissue, but it wasn't entirely successful. However, this is something we can try again. I have an appointment tomorrow morning and will get cervical massage again then.
Basically, the scar tissue is hard to dilate, but once it DOES dilate, everything goes whiz bang. Cervical massage can help. It's a possibility that the tissue might need to be cut (the one in a million medically necessary episiotomy). If the issue is understood, it's rare that this become a c-section. However, if it's missed, it appears to be "failure to progress" and often results in c-section.
Apparently this is becoming more and more of an issue because of procedures like LEEP, cervical biopsies, D&Cs, IUD placement, etc, in addition to tearing due to previous deliveries, like mine due to nuchal hand. But not that many people know that this can potentially cause "failure to progress."
Up until now, the scar tissue wasn't that different texturally from the rest of the cervix, but now that the rest of the cervix has completely softened, it's very pronounced. That's why it wasn't noticed until now.
Now there's certainly a possibility that I might go into labor before the morning, but this goes a long way to explain why things haven't been moving despite other indications that my body is trying to go into labor. Even though intellectually I knew it wasn't my fault that I wasn't in labor yet (ie not something I was failing to do by nonfeasance or malfeasance), having something concrete to explain it really helps emotionally.
Also, the baby is still doing fine, so we're not until a ticking clock to get her out or anything.
So this is frustrating, but I don't feel like I'm floundering around in the dark anymore.
I went for a walk this evening with my husband and while I was walking, I started feeling contractions. We tried to get a hold of the on-call for my practice, but couldn't--paging wasn't picking up. Since we were close to the hospital, we decided to just walk there and explain in person.
When I got to the hospital, the contractions stopped. But I got examined. The doctor found that I had a "hard" part of my cervix, consistent with having scar tissue on the cervix. This is probably attributable to the internal tearing I experienced with my previous labor. The doctor did some cervical massage to try to soften the tissue, but it wasn't entirely successful. However, this is something we can try again. I have an appointment tomorrow morning and will get cervical massage again then.
Basically, the scar tissue is hard to dilate, but once it DOES dilate, everything goes whiz bang. Cervical massage can help. It's a possibility that the tissue might need to be cut (the one in a million medically necessary episiotomy). If the issue is understood, it's rare that this become a c-section. However, if it's missed, it appears to be "failure to progress" and often results in c-section.
Apparently this is becoming more and more of an issue because of procedures like LEEP, cervical biopsies, D&Cs, IUD placement, etc, in addition to tearing due to previous deliveries, like mine due to nuchal hand. But not that many people know that this can potentially cause "failure to progress."
Up until now, the scar tissue wasn't that different texturally from the rest of the cervix, but now that the rest of the cervix has completely softened, it's very pronounced. That's why it wasn't noticed until now.
Now there's certainly a possibility that I might go into labor before the morning, but this goes a long way to explain why things haven't been moving despite other indications that my body is trying to go into labor. Even though intellectually I knew it wasn't my fault that I wasn't in labor yet (ie not something I was failing to do by nonfeasance or malfeasance), having something concrete to explain it really helps emotionally.
Also, the baby is still doing fine, so we're not until a ticking clock to get her out or anything.
So this is frustrating, but I don't feel like I'm floundering around in the dark anymore.