Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Birth Options

I went for my gynae visit this morning, and is really glad to know that Clyde is growing well. At 27W3D, he stands in at 1213g and was wriggling around through the whole ultrasound. Gynae commented his head is still up (in breech position), but that's not a concern yet since I still have a good 12 weeks to go.

I checked in with Dr Teo on my exercise regime and she says it will be good if I can continue. Had initially wanted to suspend my gym membership at the end of this month, but with her reassurance, I'd probably let it run till at least end April. 

The next thing was on birth options. During my performance review with my boss yesterday, she asked if I am going for natural or csect. Obviously with elective csect, I have more control over the timeline of my maternity leave and when to handover my job. I told her I will give her an answer after consulting gynae today, but she encouraged me to go for natural if possible. 

I think I've been overly optimistic on vbac. Dr Teo took a look at the information for my 1st birth and she said "if the reason for csect during #1 was due to baby being in breech position, I'd say we can try. However, your #1 is quite small and if labor failed to progress that time, it usually means there is some issues with the hip or pelvis being too small. That being said, if you really want to try, 
1. Labour cannot be induced. Contractions must start naturally
2. Labour cannot exceed 6-8hours, else it will also end in emergency csect.
3. We can only wait until full term (40 weeks). If baby is late, we have to do csect." Thereafter, she ran me through the risks of uterine rupture, and baby has 20% chance of getting cerebral palsy if that happens. 

Hmmm, now I'm feeling a bit apprehensive about the whole vbac thing already. She recommends I give it some thoughts before making a final decision. She also broached on the topic of hospital delivery and told me to let the clinic assistants know my choice. I got the price list from the clinic assistants, and it's time to compare the costs of emergency csect vs elective csect. 

Dr Teo's clinic will be moving to Mount Elizabeth Novena hospital on 1 April. My next visit in 3 weeks' time will be there. 

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