And the first trip to L and D

went slightly better than expected, and did much to reassure me that despite all my frustrations midwives are a good fit for us.

So how we got there: around midday I realized that I hadn't felt the bargain baby move in a while, maybe a couple of days. That's not at all unusual for me, but I called the midwives just in case. My favorite one suggested I drink 3 cups of OJ (something I am always loath to do because of the insulin resistance/prior GD), lie on my side, and call in an hour if I don't feel anything. I promptly ran out, bought OJ, chugged it, had a dried pineapple slice for good measure lay down ... and ... fell fast asleep until she called to check on me. Whoops. But on the way to run out the door to collect the fusspot from daycare I was pretty sure that I felt one decent movement, so I called it a day.

Except, of course, there was a change of shift at the midwives and the next one called me back an hour later and asked me to go to L and D to be triaged.

The L and D nurse was incredible. Instead of taking my full medical history, etc. she took one look at my intake sheet and said "Let's listen to that heartbeat for a while and when we both feel better, we'll do the paperwork." And sure enough, the bargain baby was kicking away. As far as I was concerned, all was well and I was just about ready to be discharged.

The problem was that in a 45 NST I had one braxton-hicks contraction. Which is totally and delightfully normal for almost 33 weeks. Doctor L and D however came in and announced she was ready to a transvaginal u/s, FNN, and Group Strep B test in case I was about to go into 'pre-term labor.' I know that doctors are very critical of how midwife-people tend to be anti-doctor (and I am so not in the camp, being quite happy to delegate all of the high risk aspects of my pregnancy to medical professionals, and to leave the getting the baby out part to people who focus on just that), but it was so classic that I walked in worried that my baby was in distress or no longer with us, and the moment I was there the doctor started worrying about pre-term labor for which I have absolutely no risk factors: no contractions I can feel, no prior pre-term labor, no signs of pre-term labor from earlier exams.

So, of course, I refused the pre-term labor tests, which of course triggered the head doctor coming in for a consultation and a fresh round of calls to the midwives. Needless to say, no one was all that annoyed because everyone involved could freely admit that a single small braxton-hicks contraction during a 45 minute NST does not exactly send off crazy alarms for pre-term labor.

So off I finally headed to Jamba Juice and home to the laundry. It's looking more and more likely that I may soon find myself in for weekly NSTs given my utter inability to feel most fetal movement.