Our Due Date: It Came & It Went, Now What?

Like so many women out there, my due date has come and gone with absolutely no signs of labour coming on any time soon… Also like many women out there, I have had messages since the due date to be like ‘anything yet?’ or daily calls from my momma to check in and see if everything ok. Like I wouldn’t tell people when things kick off….

On the one hand its lovely as people are just as excited as we are to meet baby. But on the other hand as I’m not stressing about baby ‘being on time’, especially as Hubby and I are always late, everyone else should be chilled about it too. It’s right was Megan from Birth_ed says, we should have told people the due date was a week or two later to stop the endless checking in. But I am grateful to have so many people around us that love us and our little one so much already.

What Have We Been Doing?

Our due date was the 12^th Sept and I knew in myself that baby would be late so:

• I finished work on 10^th for maternity leave
• Made plans for over last weekend. Nothing major, because….Covid, but we went for brunch and went to my parents for Sunday dinner etc.
• The suns come out so gone for walks and chilled in our garden; enjoying the garden furniture that was basically delivered when the sun went into hiding
• Scrapbooking. I currently have 3 on the go:
  • my happiness book with my fave quotes and pages from my Psychologies magazines
  • my brother’s girlfriend got us a beaut baby journal book so it’s been great writing in that and thinking about which pictures we should use
  • a small baby scrapbook that I got on Amazon so all of the scans we’ve gotten, other pics we’ve taken while I’ve been pregnant and then some pics from our baby shower will go in there
• Finalised our go bags and popped them in the car
• Figured out all the baby toys we’d been given with rechargeable batteries and decided what we can use right away vs. later
• Learnt how to use our steriliser and TENS machine (finally)
• Watched a whole heap of TV 🙂

Basically anything and everything to pass the time, chill out and await baby’s arrival.

So, You’re Past Your Due Date, Any Signs Of Labour?

Long story short, nope. Baby hasn’t really dropped, but they are engaged to a certain extent; head down and in the anterior position which is great. I also think I have lost my mucus plug. There were no signs of any issues (no bleeding, not a concerning colour and no smell) so haven’t bothered telling my midwife or anything.

It’s my dad’s birthday next Tuesday, so would be great if baby arrived before or after this, so everyone can keep their own birthdays lol.

What Next?

We had a midwife appointment earlier this week and as our due date had passed, they offered me a sweep but I didn’t feel the need to at the time (when the midwife measured me, apparently baby’s head wasn’t engaged enough for a sweep to make much of a difference anyway, so good call from me lol). Though, what we have done, is put a plan in place for next week:

• Monday: another midwife appointment to have a sweep and make sure baby is still all good. This will hopefully get things moving
• Wednesday: 1^st Induction appointment at the hospital. Here, they’ll give me a hormone pessary to try and induce labour in the most natural way they can. I’ll be monitored for an hour and then allowed to go home and hopefully go into labour
• If nothing happens in 24 hours, I go back again for the same procedure and if nothing happens again, they’ll break my waters. Again, if baby is all good, I’ll be allowed to go home and hopefully labour at home. If nothing happens in 24 hours, then I’ll have to be admitted into hospital to have the medicated induction and see how we go…

I’m really hoping I don’t have to go past Wednesday mainly to try and keep things as natural as possible.

But to be honest I’m pretty chilled because as you know by now, I’m a firm believer in God’s time is the best. Baby will arrive when they’re good and ready and Lord knows momma and poppa are so ready and we can’t contain our excitement!

We’ll keep you posted.

Mrs. A

xxXxx