So it sat here.
Now you might be wondering why I decided to come back to this at all. The answer is as simple as it is complex: my son.
Let me start from the beginning. In November of 2011 I got married and we got pregnant shortly there after. By Christmas the morning sickness had begun. I was unable to eat or drink anything and was slowly getting sicker and sicker. The first week of January I saw my OB for the first time to date my pregnancy. I luckily enough picked a doctor who had an ultrasound machine in her office! I laid down and there certainly was no mistaking there was definitely a baby in my belly! We were given the due date of August 10th, 2012 (later moved to August 18th). She gave me some prescriptions to help the sickness and sent us on our way... but unfortunately they didn't work for me. January and February I was in and out of the hospital due to dehydration caused by the morning sickness. I was one of the unlucky ones who gets something called Hyperemises Gravidarum- basically super horrible morning sickness that lasts all day and night and may or may not go away once you hit the second trimester. Mine didn't go away.
More pills were prescribed and when they didn't work I was admitted to the hospital for a weekend when I had lost 10 pounds in a week! Thankfully after that I started improving and we found out we were expecting a little boy! We named him Caiden James. I was only getting sick a few times a day and I had put back on the weight that I'd lost in just a month. That should have been our first warning.
March came and so did the weight gain. In four weeks I'd put on ten pounds. Not too concerning since I was finally able to eat again and I was four and a half months pregnant!
April, four weeks later I'd gained another ten pounds and I was starting to swell. My wedding ring had to come off, it hurt to bend my toes and my face looked as if I'd been stung by a hundred bees. My doctor marked it off as normal for pregnancy and so I believed her. She's the doctor, what do I know?
May. Another four weeks, another ten pounds. This time though the nurse that took my blood pressure and weighed me before I saw the doctor asked if I'd left a urine sample. Usually I only did so if asked, I never had to go when we were there and they didn't make a big deal of me not doing so each time. On the way out the door I left one and that was that.
June 14th. Three weeks since my last appointment. My weight? Nine pounds heavier. The swelling? So painful I couldn't bend my fingers or toes without wanting to cry. My face was huge! I'd been having rib pain so bad that I couldn't sleep and it was making me physically sick. When I told my doctor, she dismissed it all as normal parts of pregnancy. She said there were no proteins in my urine and though my blood pressure had been higher the last few appointments (still don't know how high) she "wasn't concerned."
When I got home that day I did more research. I knew since March that I had preeclampsia, it was just a matter of getting my doctor to realize it. All my symptoms fit.
Sunday, June 17th at about 10pm I started having severe chest pains. It felt like there were a ton of bricks sitting on my chest. My chest hurt so bad the pain was radiating into my back and my ribs. I tired changing what position I was sitting in, I tried laying down, I tired walking around. I drank about a gallon of water. Nothing helped. Eventually I was able to fall asleep. I woke up sore and still in pain but it wasn't nearly as bad.
Monday, June 18th at about 11pm I began having the same chest pains as the night before. Moving hurt, not moving hurt. Never in my life had I been in so much pain. My husband had to work the next morning so I didn't want to wake him up to take me to the hospital only to be sent home after being told it was a normal part of pregnancy.
Tuesday, June 19th. I hadn't been able to sleep at all the night before. I asked him to please ask his grandmother if she could come take me so he could go to work and I could still get checked out. I was admitted to the hospital at 8:30am.
I was hooked up to monitors to watch my baby's heartbeat and for any contractions I might have been having. The labor and delivery nurses asked me questions about my various symptoms and I told them everything from the last few months. When they took my blood pressure it was a staggering 189/102.
I was given medicine to lower it and my doctor was paged to come to the hospital and check on me. By the time she arrived I had received a steroid shot to help mature Caiden's lungs in case he would need to be delivered early and a catheter was placed.
My OB arrived at the hospital and told me while the nurses were attempting to get an IV started that I had severe preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. My blood pressure was so high I was at risk of seizing and my liver was starting to fail. I needed to be transferred to another hospital with a better NICU because my son was going to have to be delivered as soon as possible, most likely by cesarean even though she knew I had my heart set on a natural birth.
11:00am I arrived at the second hospital after a 30 minute ambulance ride. I was hooked up to IV fluids, a magnesium drip, antibiotics and magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures. A quick ultrasound was done and Caiden was thankfully head down and in position. I'd be able to have a vaginal delivery if everything went smoothly. My mom and brother were on a plane to be there hopefully in time for me to give birth.
Around noon on June 20th I was put on a pitocin drip to start contractions. A fuly bulb was placed to help me reach 5cm by midnight. Midnight came and I wasn't dilated enough. The pitocin was upped and a new doctor was on shift. 4:30am on June 21st, I was dilated just enough so they could break my water. It was the most painful moment of my life and the worst part of delivery.
I was lucky or unlucky enough that the contractions I was having I didn't feel at all. I was able to sleep in between the nurses coming in to check on me. A little after 2pm I hit transition. I was only dilated to 8cm but my baby and my body were ready to deliver. At 2:27pm after less than 5 minutes of pushing, I delivered Caiden weighing 3lbs 8.4oz and measuring 16 1/2 inches long at only 31w5d gestation.
He was sent straight to the NICU and I was still on strict bed rest for at least the next 24hours. I wouldn't be able to see my son until the next day at least. And so the wait began. The next 24 hours passed by slowly but thankfully I wasn't in any pain from delivery. I was actually refusing the pain medication the nurses were bringing me.
When I was finally taken off bed rest the next day, I got to go to the NICU and see my son. He was doing wonderful, even though he was on a CPAP machine, had a feeding tube and was under lights for jaundice. It was easy to tell who's facial features he had, but it was still heartbreaking to see him so small and helpless. I wasn't even allowed to hold him. The hardest part was leaving him there with the nurses to go back to my room when I couldn't stand any longer by his side. There was nothing I could do but wait until he got stronger.
I was finally discharged on June 24th after spending six days in the hospital. I was forced to leave him behind. He wasn't strong enough to come home with us and it was unclear as to when he'd be able to. The nurses and his doctor assured us he was doing just fine, better even than most babies born when he was. I still cried myself to sleep those first few nights.
Now, its 18 days later and he's doing better than we had ever hoped. He is in an incubator now and almost ready to move to a bassinet. He's breathing perfectly on his own and is being breast and bottle fed. We're hoping to be able to take him home the middle of next week but it depends on his progress over the next week.
There's nothing else in the world as gratifying and humbling as being a mother. I'm so proud of my son.
No comments:
Post a Comment