Happy Monday all! Hope y'all had a F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C holiday weekend, I know we did!
I am a person who loves birth stories and I mentioned last week that a very complicated pregnancy interrupted my marriage date plans, so I felt the need desire to share baby B's birth/ complicated pregnancy story. Here it goes.
When I found out I was going to be Momma Bee, I was ecstatic - my first doctors appointment put my due date at April 15th (tax day, yipee?) and from that moment I started planning.
When I was roughly 6.5 months pregnant I was at my normal bi-weekly appointment and I had asked about the horrid swelling in my feet. It was TERRIBLE. I fondly remember sending J a picture of my legs, ankles and feet which resembled something off of the Hulk or Big Foot one day while I was at work and he responded with "Is that your feet? YIKES!". Anyway, my doctor took one look and then retreated out of the room without a word, she came back holding my chart and what resembled a cash register receipt (what I later learned was the UA test results). She proceeded to ask what I had eaten that morning and when I answered a bowl of Crispix, her jaw hit the floor. She informed me that I wouldn't make it to work for another few hours because my UA showed ridiculous amounts of glucose in my urine and I needed to see the Endocrinologist, who was on the other side of the office, right away. She poked my finger just to cover all bases and my blood came back as a 164. Later that day I was started on a high strength dose of NovoLog, where with each meal I would have to stick myself for blood then, jab myself with a needle to inject insulin.
Two weeks after my doctors appointment that concluded I was a gestational diabetic, I started having severe abdominal pain while sitting at my desk one day. I immediately asked my boss if I could go home, he of course said yes (the man had three kids, he got it) and I was convinced by my mom and J to go to the hospital instead of coming home. When I arrived they performed every test imaginable and figured I had huge gallstones, I had an option at that point I could have surgery OR wait. I chose to wait. During my follow up appointment for that episode my doctor decided to take me out of work (effective the following Friday) and I was to stay home on bed rest.
When I was put on bed rest I was also put on strict monitoring, which meant I was to go in at least once a week every week to see my doctor, during my March 1st appointment (I was taken out of work the last week of January), the other doctor in the practice that saw me noticed I had the early signs of pre-eclampsia and wanted to have me admitted for 24 hour monitoring, I was devastated. I cried the entire way home because I knew what was coming. I knew that with my luck I wouldn't leave the sterile hospital until I birthed baby B, but I went anyway. When I checked in that evening, the nurse insisted that I needed an IV (though I didn't use it until 10 days later....), after three tries she finally got the IV in and I was left alone to sleep in a bed that I hated to call my own for as long as I did.
When my 24 hours was up, I was not evicted from my room. Instead I was informed to make myself comfortable because I wasn't leaving. Minutes turned into days in that hospital room and on March 8th, they decided to do a 24 hour UA collection to see where my numbers were. The next morning I was informed that a normal number is in the 50's, I was in the 700's for pre-eclampsia and that I was to be induced that night.
They started my induction on the night of March 9th. On the morning of the 10th, my doctor came in at 10am and broke my water. This is where things started moving quickly. I was so sick of my hospital bed that I begged to get up and walk the floor once my water was broken , luckily, I was allowed to and ended up walking for an hour and a half before calling 'uncle' and pleading for an epidural. After 45 minutes of waiting I finally got my epidural put in and was able to sleep for a good two hours. When I finally awoke (mind you, they started pitocin while I was asleep to get things moving faster), my epidural had worn off on my left side. After crying in agony for what seemed to be hours (it was only minutes), they were finally able to give me a spinal block and make it numb again. By that point I hadn't been checked in hours and when my nurse (Danica) left the room I had the unmistakeable urge to push. Within seconds J and my mom had run into the hallway screaming that I needed to push and a team of nurses came running in.
After 12 pushes, baby B was born at 4:58pm on March 10th. I was able to hold her for only moments before she was whisked away to the NICU (being 6 weeks early). She spent the next 16 days in the NICU, and every day I would drive down and spend 8-10 hours with her, just to make sure she was ok!
Until next time y'all! Have a great week!
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