Inducing Wed. April 19th, 2006

We went to the doctor today. They did various tests and another sonogram. The baby is no longer breech. His head is down and he is facing toward Brandi's back. They couldn't get any good pictures of his face, so they gave us a print of his foot instead. So, now we have a nice picture of our baby's foot. I can't wait to show it to my parents! We are told that everything looks great. The baby is perfect, exactly they way he should be at this stage. The doctor says that at 37 weeks, he will be just as ready to be on the outside as if he went to his due date. The doctor re-iterated that MTHFR is a fairly new type of diagnosis and that doctors don't really know or agree on how it should be treated. He suggests that we induce labor early, on April 19th. The reasoning is that he will be perfectly healthy and ready to live on the outside and that inside of her he is at some risk. We are to go off of the blood thinners 3 days prior to induction. This will help protect Brandi from excessive bleeding. He says that there is some risk that the baby's lungs might not yet be fully developed or that he could get jaundice. But, he says that the chances are low and that he can be given oxygen if needed. The doctor seems to think that this risk is lower than the risk of waiting for the birth to occur naturally. And, induction is safer for my wife because she won't go into labor while on the blood thinners.

The week of April 17th, I was scheduled to be in Nashville for a planning week. We were supposed to be working on developing project plans for the next phase of our projects. My boss was originally to be away that week because his wife was pregnant and due April 20th. But, his baby was born early. Therefore, my boss will take my place during the week of April 17th. It's not the ideal week to miss, but there's no way they'd be able to make me go. I'll probably take a week's vacation when the baby is born and then work from home one or two weeks thereafter.

After the doctor's appointment, Brandi, her mother, her sister, and myself went shopping. We bought several items from our registry that we'd not yet received as gifts. I think that we've got the necessities covered. It seems like no matter how much stuff we buy that there is always more stuff we supposedly need. We live in such a materialistic society. I keep thinking back to my cultural anthropology class in college. In that class, we studied many different culture's perspectives on childbirth and child rearing. I don't know if he's lucky to be born in our culture or if all of our materialistic stuff will simply weigh him down and spoil him rotten.