Take Five

So, last night was un. be. lievable.

I took variations of black and blue cohosh all day, after my morning chiropractic adjustment. At 6 PM, we began a series of physical therapy-type positions, from heinie in the air to draping a leg over the edge of a sofa, to being literally hung in the air by a scarf (thanks, Ben) to get Grace's head to slide back up, then back down in the correct position. Having done a few afternoons of research, plus palpations we had decided Gracie looked something like this:



During pregnancy, I have always carried very heavily in the front, hanging low. I tend to have a pretty curved spine, and just out of sheer laziness, tend to let it go "swaybacked" even more when pregnant. Resultingly, Grace's little bum stuck out the front pretty far, and never would allow her head enough weight on it to make contact with my cervix. In other words, instead of us being all stacked up straight up and down (her knees, bum, head, my cervix), she hung out away from my body too far to engage her head.

After several different relaxing positions, we saw Grace's body just STREEETCH out upwards. There was one point where I stood up from one of the maneuvers and everyone exclaimed, "Your belly just totally changed shape!" Indeed, it had flattened out and gone upwards. I immediately began to get heartburn. :P We had GREAT success starting up labor after that. I could literally feel her head hit my cervix, and as Ben and I walked our neighborhood for the next 2 hours, contractions came in steadily. By 11 PM, they were getting pretty strong, painful, and I was walking the halls with all the lights off, doing lunges during contractions. I felt the need to concentrate while pulling her little body upwards towards my chest during contractions, to settle her into a good stacked position over my cervix. By midnight, I began to get very sleepy, and asked our midwife if I could sleep a little. We all went to bed.

I awoke with strong contractions and lots of pain at 3 AM. I labored on the toilet (very easy to feel the position of the head on the cervix that way), spiraling her body downwards while clutching my belly to me for about 2 hours. Unfortunately, the lunges had worn my legs out so bad that I couldn't really do any walking. I was exhausted by 5 AM, and crawled back into bed, assumed the "Runner's Position" with a pillow under my leg and tried to fall asleep. I was unable to, since the ctx kept right up with me, becoming more and more painful, longer, and close together each time. I was crying (whining) to Ben and gripping his hand by the "end"...rather frozen in pain....

Last thing: I got up to use the bathroom, and everything stopped.

We suspect this is because of spending so much time in bed, frozen in position, immobile, and lost my alignment. To confirm that, when I got up to walk around before breakfast, my left hip felt painfully out of alignment. Poor Gracie is squirming around trying to get back in position at the moment, and we are headed off to the chiropractor this morning to realign, and start over.

I don't have any stats at the moment, other than I lost my *ahem* mucus plug.....which is progress, still......but we're avoiding cervical checks to diminish the risk of infection.

Keep praying. Though we're learning a LOT through this, it's exhausting, disappointing, messing with all our minds....we could use prayer for strength for me, too. I slept 3 hours last night.