40w5d: Owwwwww! (my ankle!)

40w5d here...

As I mentioned yesterday, we are going to go in to the hospital tonight (as planned), but ask to speak to the on-call attending physician (a different OB/GYN named Dr. D) before we really commit to the induction. I have never met her, but Dr. D is supposed to be really good, so I hope that she lives up to her reputation. Since this is an academic medical center, she should be there the entire time overnight to supervise the interns and residents. Basically, S & I are hoping for a repeat exam and a second opinion. If Dr. D seems confident that induction is the way to go, we'll go ahead with it. If she is ambivalent or against it, we may wait 2-3 more days, hopefully with another NST in the meantime.

Yesterday afternoon, things seemed a bit hopeful. I noticed some clear blobs of what I assume were parts of my mucus plug. It wasn't a huge volume, and these blobs were clear with absolutely no tinge of blood or yellow, so who knows. Also, I noticed that I could at least touch my cervix again (barely), but it was more accessible than a few days ago. My, the things I learned from "Taking Charge of Your Fertility"!

I ate left over HOT Thai food for lunch, and then S and I took a nice walk in our neighborhood. Later, we got dinner (BBQ) and went to see "The Wrestler" (depressing). For some reason (probably the loud music/noise in this movie), BabyGirl was super awake during the entire thing and was squirming up a storm and setting off pretty frequent B-H contractions. Also, I was getting some sharp stabbing pains in my cervix, which has not happened much before. I really felt like maybe something was starting.

When we got home at about 9:30 PM, S and I decided to take another short walk -- really only a few blocks, but it was a nice evening, so why not? I wore the same black clogs that I had worn to the movie. When we were almost back to our house, I somehow managed to step off the side of my shoe and fall to the ground. DH and I were holding hands, so saw me falling and he held onto my hand really tightly. I fell hard onto my left calf and really twisted my poor right ankle. I got up, tried to dust myself off, laughed at my clumsiness, and walked home, but about 1/2 hour later my ankle/foot started really killing me. It's so weird because there is no bruising and no swelling, but it really really hurts! OWWWW!

Needless to say that our plans to go to a local park and museums (Balboa Park for the SoCal people) this afternoon are shot. In fact, I can't think of anything much that I can do... not even chores! Ice is helping a bit, and I am using hiking poles around the house to try to take some weight off of it. My mom is going to bring over some old crutches this afternoon. If I weren't going to the hospital tonight, and if I had to work tomorrow, I would seriously have to consider going to the ER.

Assuming that I go ahead with this induction tonight, I'm going to try to have the baby (late tomorrow?) and then if it's still bad, I will ask for some sort of quick ortho or PT eval before I go home (presumably Tuesday?). Maybe they can give me one of those walking boots or something. I can't see how I can really take care of a baby when I can barely walk. And so much for my plans to try a lot of the squatting/standing positions during my contractions...