Success

The version worked! I think everyone was pretty surprised. My doctor seemed psyched. Steve and I went into it assuming it wouldn't work. This is what I like to call the positive power of negative thinking. Or Irish superstition. Either way, I employ it with wild abandon and sometimes it works. The rest of the time I can say I told you so.

But anyway. The version was a rather intense experience. First, we waited almost two and a half hours because apparently it had been a nutty day on Labor and Delivery. They kept apologizing, but what can you d0 - the doctors were busy delivering babies.

When it finally got started, they gave me a shot to relax my muscles, which makes the uterus more flexible for the procedure. The doc kept saying the delay was because she ccouldn't find another doctor to help. We hadn't realized it took two, but it quickly became clear why. One pushed on the baby's rump and the other pushed on her head and it felt like nothing I can describe. It wasn't so much painful as unbelievable pressure and some pain. Two doctors were sweating and breathing hard from the effort, and all that pressure was being applied to my abdomen. I was literally writhing, thinking, I'm going through this so that I can go through labor?!?!

The first two tries didn't take and they kinda said, well we usually do three and then stop. They kept saying the baby was a perfect candidate because she was small. So on the third attempt, I tried to be extra tough (Steve's poor hand) so they wouldn't stop pushing. They started saying it worked, but I didn't really understand what they meant (it couldn't have worked - I thought we were just there to go through the motions), and then my doctor said get her some oxygen (her being me). I guess they got her flipped, but her heartrate dropped (a known and expected possibility). Once I had the oxygen, it recovered, and I finally realized "it worked" meant "the baby is now upside down". Oh, how my belly hurts today! They said I would feel like I had done a thousand crunches. That's one way of putting it. I'm thinking of something more like taffy makers.

Now I have to start figuring out all the stuff I've been blowing off, like the signs of labor and packing a hospital bag, let alone how to actually get through labor. At least I know where L&D is now and that the elevators will take no less than 10 minutes to get me there. However, babies flip back a not insignificant amount of the time, so we're keeping the c-section date and they'll monitor her position in the meantime.

Yesterday marked 37 weeks. So I guess we're now at the full term, having a baby any day point. I'm working frantically to get everything done by my thesis presentation next Thursdsay so I'll be able to relax after that. And by working frantically, I mean writing excessively long blog posts instead of my program evaluation paper.

Good baby!