Willow's Birth Saga--Part Two

Sunday, 2 days before due date
I laid at home on the couch (except for the 90 minutes spent at church) trying really, really hard not to feel as bitter as I wanted to, and not experiencing a single contraction. I finally realized later that the most likely reason I was ordered on bed rest was because I was at the hospital on a Saturday night. They didn’t want to have to deal with me on Sunday (otherwise they would have had a follow-up non stress test the next day instead of 2 days later), and they didn’t want any liability for anything that might occur over the weekend, so they had to be covered by being able to say that I was ordered on bed rest.
Monday, 1 day before due date
I went to the fetal non-stress test, which showed ablsolutely no irregularities, then to my regular prenatal visit. The internal exam was much more uncomfortable, even painful, than typical, and afterward the OB said, “you will bleed a little from that one.” Which I did.
He’d had the readings from the Saturday fetal monitoring sent to him so he could look over them. I asked him about it and he told me he actually couldn’t see any reason why I would have been ordered on bed rest. I was really upset about this because that means he concurred with the on-call doctor on Saturday night without actually having any basis for his opinion. He didn’t even tell me that he was concurring only because he trusted the doctor and didn’t have the means to make an informed decision against it over the phone. On Saturday night, it sounded like he really thought for himself that it was the best option, and it was like pulling teeth to get him to agree to let me go to church.
Digression #2: I think bed rest is the panacea placebo for all obstetricians. It is prescribed for an infinite variety of conditions, circumstances, or potential complications, but there is very little evidence that it makes a difference in the outcomes of most pregnancies. It does, however, serve to make the OB feel like they are doing something to be in control of the situation. There may be a few, very limited situations in which “horizontal positioning” is a legitimate remedy, but I can’t believe that OB’s really take into account the huge impact that not being able to get up has on a woman and the running of her household for as flippantly as I have seen it ordered.
Tuesday, the due date
I had contractions regularly all day. Never were they strong enough to say “woah! These are real,” so I never bothered to call the doctor. They did get stronger throughout the day until bed time when I said to myself, “If I can sleep through them, then they are not strong enough to worry about,” and went to bed.