red flag - 35 Weeks - Induction Scheduled for This Weekend!

 Week 35 this week and by Thursday I'll be 36 weeks!

Hello Family and Friends,

Summary:

My fluid is low in today's appointments so they scheduled my induction for Saturday 3/16

Detail:

This has been an eventful week, after I saw the trend of my fluid decreasing over the previous couple weeks last Monday, I was going into last week worried it would continue to decrease. So On Wednesday, after the reading of 5.4, I felt like I wasn't feeling Lucas move around as much so I went into an office closer to my house in Renton to get checked. They did a non-stress test and also ordered an ultrasound and got a reading of 5.8 for my fluid. This gave me a lot of peace of mind. I also got another non-stress test and ultrasound on Friday which also showed Lucas was moving around a good amount and another reading of 5.8 which gave me hope that the fluid could stay stable through the weekend and perhaps another week to get us to 37 weeks which is the earliest he'll be considered full term.

Catching up to today, the ultrasound showed no more fluid around his lungs!! and also showed a reading of 3.5 for my fluid which is very low. Not too low to be stupendously concerned, but enough that the obstetrician said that all these signs show that the placenta isn't supporting him as much as she would like to see, which I agree. So we scheduled the induction for this weekend which will get me to 36 weeks, which is pretty darn close to 37. I feel a sense of relief and anxious that it now feels really real and Fernando and I will make a plan for the next week and expecting that Lucas will most likely need to stay in the NICU for a week after birth, we'll need to make a plan for next week as well.

I think that we can hope that the delivery goes well, I personally hope that I don't need a c-section just so that I can recover faster and be more able to get around and see Lucas since he'll likely be in the NICU for at least a few days. AND if he's doing well after birth, who knows, maybe he can go home early since he was a champ and made it this far.

There's still a chance that I COULD go into labor this week, and I have 2 NST's scheduled to monitor him on Wednesday and Friday this week to make sure he's doing well this week despite the low fluid leading up to the induction - if he seems to be struggling I COULD need to be induced even earlier, but that's a kind of worst case scenario.

He's still made it so far!! Here we are at the home stretch and it's amazing to have a plan in place to meet our little man!

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you all for your prayers and I'll definitely share here when he's born this weekend. I noticed it is St. Patrick's day on Sunday. My experience of inductions is that they take a while so I expect to be in the delivery room waiting for several hours at a time for some induction technique to be administered and then wait for it to kick in so feel free to send me messages. I might even keep this blog updated on Saturday of the progress because I'll have some down time of waiting. And then I'll definitely e-mail out pictures and updates once he's here!

Keep us in your prayers in the next couple weeks as we work to have him be with us as safely and as healthy as possible. I feel so much encouragement and prayers around me and our family and am so blessed and humbled to have you as part of our community.

Love you all!