Yeah, my MW the other day told me I was "cleared" for homebirth around May 6th or 7th-ish, I think my jaw dropped to the floor because um, that's like 3 weeks or less from now! Not that I'd go that early but it puts that little rush on things!!!
Speaking of, I have good news on two fronts that I was stressed over! My friend who rents the birth tub offered to rent it to me for just the filter cost, which she found for 20 dollars!!
I'm still going to try to pay her some extra for her time/effort/etc. and bake her some muffins or something, but seriously that is a HUGE weight off my back! My MW and I were going over all the birth prefrence stuff at my last visit (you know, like, are you ok with vag. exams in labor, do you want to give the baby vit. K, etc.), I told her she's not allowed to let me get out of that tub
That's my birthplan, make sure I give birth in that big giant tub that we pulled all the strings in the world to get here!
Also, my BP has been good. My dad let me borrow his BP monitor and I take it a few times a week at home, it's been really good. It was even ok at the MW visit the other day, though a little higher than at home. So, now I need some advice. The big "plan" all along was when my BP starts creeping up we're going to do whatever we can to keep it under the cutoff, and then at 36/37 weeks we're going to nudge baby to come early. Meaning, stretch and sweep with EPO, taking cotton root tincture, and if it gets over 140/90 we'll try stronger herbs, and if baby is favorable and I'd otherwise risk out we'd try breaking my water at home and get things started that way. Which freaked me out because my babies cook past 40 weeks, and I don't want to mess with nature, BUT I accepted that plan of action because if I'm getting 150/110 like last time it's this or I'm hospital bound where I'll be getting WAY more intervention than that!
But now we're in this situation where I'm not getting high readings at all. I'm getting very normal ones. And I'm almost 34 weeks. So now what? She said we can throw that plan out the window totally and wait for my body. OR we can do just the stretch/sweeps at 37 weeks just in case my BP shoots up in the last weeks. I almost want to say no, just leave things alone, but I'm worried that my BP thing is related to the heat, and it's going to get hot in May. I've had an August baby and a July baby with BP issues that start in May each time. It could be coincidence that that's just the end of pregnancy for me, or it could totally be that once we hit a heat wave and I start getting swelling, my BP starts going up. And I know we can always wait and see if that happens, but then there's less time to work with if I'm 39 weeks and suddenly getting really high readings....whereas if I consent to stretch/sweep at 37, my body is much more favorable to going into labor (or being helped along with herbs) when/if it jumps up, and might not even get to that point of further intervention. I decided to take the GBS test, because if I'm + then that answers things, I'm not going to mess around in there. But if I'm not then I really don't know....thoughts anyone??
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