35 1/2 weeks

When I went to my 34 week appointment my doctor was starting to get a little worried. My swelling is continuing to get worse and my blood pressure is continuing to rise. Neither are good signs. It probably means I'm headed toward getting pre-eclampsia again. She's keeping a close eye on it though. Also when I lifted my shirt up to listen to the baby, her eyes got big as she saw my hernia. Up until this point she never seemed very concerned about it and just laughed when I would try and shove it back into my stomach to get an accurate size measurement. This time however, neither of us could get it back in. She started poking around and told me she couldn't tell the difference between my hernia, my uterus and the intestine/bm sticking out of the hole. Grand.
At this point we had our longest chat to date about what we needed to do.

*Flashback to 16 weeks: Mart and I had met with a surgeon to discuss getting my (at this point in time we thought it was only 1) hernia fixed. It was nothing big and no big deal. He explained to us that he would like to perform the surgery about 4 weeks after the baby was born. That gives my body enough time to have my muscles shrink back to the size they are supposed to be. He told us how he would have to sew in a mesh panel. I asked him at that point in time if it would be possible to fix the hernia at the same time as a c-section if I ended up needing one again. He said they would prefer not to do that because it's not sanitary with all the amniotic fluid, blood, etc. already all over the place and my risk for infection goes up. He told me that if something were to happen and it became and emergency he would fix my hernia while I was pregnant between around then and 24 weeks. After that, he wouldn't fix it in my 3rd trimester unless it was crazy critical. He didn't want to put me into pre-term labor. That was about it*

Back to my long chat with Dr. Craig. She is starting to get concerned over my umbilical hernia (the one that the surgeon doesn't even know about yet) because it is just getting so big. Most women if they have them, it doesn't end up being a huge deal. They are just kind of there and even go away on some people. Mine is in fact getting worse. We talked about how much harder it will be to try and recover from 2 surgeries within 4 weeks of each other (if it came down to a c-section ... I was going to attempt a VBAC). She then said that she was going to try and talk to the surgeon and get him to tag team with her and fix my hernia at the same time the baby comes. She also said she'd check my progress at my next visit (36 weeks) and unless he was practically falling out, sadly my thoughts for having a VBAC would have to change. She looked at me and said "10 more days, if only it were 10 more days." I think she was telling me that if I had just been 10 days further along she would have just said lets be done with this. Not very often a doctor says stuff like that to you.

Anyway, she thinks at this point in time that she'll get the doctor to come do a surgery with her and that I'll have to have a vertical incision down my belly to get the baby out and fix both hernias at the same time. That means I'll end up with a "T" shaped scar. After that, my chances of having a VBAC in the future is zero. You can't have one if you have a vertical scar down your belly. But ... the plus side is that I only have to recover from surgery once, not twice within a month of each other.

I have a feeling that at my next appointment she will look at me and tell me lets get this over with and to pick a date. This is where a problem comes into play. My mom and her friend have booked a cruise from the 11th-15th. My appointment was scheduled for the 11th. She would be long gone and have no way for me to contact her until she was back on Friday, so she wouldn't know what was going on. She asked me to reschedule my appointment for this week so she knew what the plan was before she left, that way if I needed her to she could cancel her trip and stay home. I'm not going to ask her to cancel her trip. That's not fair. I had no control over what's going to/or might happen in the next week or two so we had no way of knowing when she booked it in the first place. On the other hand, I had the same problems with swelling, high blood pressure around the same time with Ethan and he came 3 weeks early. 3 weeks early will be the 15th when she is supposed to be getting back. I am not quite sure what to do. I kind of only think she's even considering canceling her trip in the first place because my Aunt and Grandma got upset with her over it knowing that I could be having a baby while she's gone. When I had Ethan, she and my entire family left for a week long Disney vacation the DAY I was discharged from the hospital. It was just us left to figure it out. I was pretty upset to say the least, but what can you do?

Anyway, I know this has been long ... but my rescheduled appointment is on Thursday (2 more days of waiting) and I guess we'll find out what the plan is then. Pretty crazy to think that I may possibly have another baby this weekend (I am doubtful that it'll be this week) or next week (which I think is more likely). I am SUPER glad however that this is almost over and I can go back to feeling normal again. I thought being pregnant with Ethan was hard. I was sick the entire time and was drugged and slept on my couch until he was born. I would take that again over being pregnant with a hernia any day. I know he'll be worth it. Now, I guess we better come up with a middle name ...