It's taken me a little time to sit down and write this. I haven't had much time, and honestly it's taken some time to digest everything that has happened in the last two weeks. I shall start at the beginning.
One Tues Dec 30 H & I had just got home from a few days out of the city with his family for some holiday fun. I had a regular OB appt in the afternoon. The swelling had been slowly getting worse, I was really swollen in the lower half of my body, but also my hands and my face - the camera was not my friend this holiday season - hello double chin, please GTFO. My OB was late, as usual, I finally got called back and the nurse did my weight as always, I said I didn't want to know but she told me anyways, maybe she didn't hear me. Anyways, we go into the exam room and she says something like, "Did you notice you've put on a lot of weight recently?" I was ready to cry, already feeling super self conscious and now this. Um, it was the holidays, I'm 8 months pregnant and swollen as shit. My OB had said don't worry about the scale just eat healthy so that's what I had been doing. Anyways she left and I fought back tears - between the weight comment and the terrible pelvic pain and the lack of sleep, I was pretty emotional. OB comes in, does the usual routine. We get to the part where she usually tries to leave as quickly as possible, when she tells me she wants to send me to L&D to get assessed. She downplays it all, but says don't go home, go straight there and tell your H to meet you there. Don't panic, but your BP is up, there's protein in your urine and there's been substantial weight gain since my last appt (2 weeks before). Um, don't panic?? Yeah ok. So I left and called H like 7 times, his stupid phone went to voicemail - oh no wait, because we'd changed our phone plan earlier in the month, his VM wasn't even activated. I freaked out and called my mom bawling, she thankfully helped me calm down. I decided to come home, get a drink and a book, OB said it could be a few hours, and sorry, hospital parking is near impossible to find and expensive, and I live like 7 mins from the OB office, going WITH H was the only thing that might keep me calm, and since BP was a concern, that was kind of important.
I got home, tried in the least panicky way I could to wake him up (he was napping), tell him to get dressed, we need to go to L&D, but don't panic, everything is fine. We got there, the nurse was waiting for me, I was immediately stabbed with all the needles for bloodwork, had another pee test, got hooked up to the NST and answered a bunch of questions. The nurse looked at me, and literally said, the an empathetic look on her face, "Uh, I don't think you're going home tonight." She was really sweet the whole time. The on call OB came in and basically said I have preeclampsia and we should be prepared, they may need to deliver the babies that night.
WTF? Seriously, wtf is happening right now?? I thought this was an assessment and now you're saying you may need to deliver my babies, tonight?? They were only 32 weeks, it was too early! It wasn't February, but shit, it wasn't even 2015 yet!! I was not ready to have 2014 babies. The OB reviewed my results, did a cervical check (holy fuck that hurt) and the plan was to repeat my b/w in 6 hrs to make a determination. We got moved to a room in L&D, I was put on the mag drip and saline, hooked up to a catheter. I was tied to all these machines, freaking the fuck out. My b/w came back looking a little better, so they wanted to basically just keep repeating it every 6hrs to monitor the preeclampsia. As long as I stayed stable enough, the babies could stay inside. My platelets were in a range that was basically
just acceptable, if they dropped at all, we were looking at a very fast c section. Fortunately we made it through the night and I was able to get the first dose of the steroid to hep with the babies lung development. The new goal was to make it another 24hrs so that we could get the second shot in too. It works best if you can hold off 24-36hrs after receiving the second shot. We prayed for every extra hour, every extra day we could keep them cooking. That first full day there was hard, really hard. I couldn't get out of bed, I couldn't get comfortable in bed, I was afraid and yet trying to stay calm enough to keep my BP in check. It was the most terrifying week of my life. I just needed them to be ok. I needed them to hold on just a little longer. I needed my body to just hang in there, to hold on, stay stable and let them stay inside for as long as possible. I have never prayed so hard for anything in my life.
H could not have been a better partner through it all. He is seriously amazing and I am so grateful. He did everything for me. He brought me clothes and food, literally helped lift my very swollen legs in and out of bed, he helped me to the bathroom when I couldn't walk there, he kept me strong when I felt like crumbling. He is my everything (until the babies, that is!) and he did everything for me, and for our babies. He was my rock through all of this, and honestly some of it was not awesome and frankly rather embarrassing for me. I love this man more than I can say <3
So we held on. I stayed stable, and in hospital. We lived test to test to hear what the verdict was, knowing at any moment someone would inevitably say, "It's time for them to come out." My OB was on vacation, hadn't even sent over all my u/s results from previous scans, she dropped by to see me once before taking off. Have I mentioned on here how much I dislike her?? Anyways, so every day it was a new OB to meet and talk to. It was so hard to put any trust in any of them when we barely knew them, but what choice did we have? Until we met Dr. A that Friday, Jan 2. He is the high risk OB and chief of OB. He was amazing. He came in (he wasn't even in that day) just to talk to us. He was informative but reassuring, he really listened and answered our questions. He gave us a sense of calm, of understanding the plan, a plan we could agree with. He even said he would take a copy of his notes on us with him over the weekend so he could talk to the on call docs as scan results came in - he wanted me have daily u/s and b/w a few times a day. (P.s. holy shit my arms look like a serious junkie, they could barely find a vein, and many they tried were empty, so sometimes one blood draw took 4 stabbings).
Come Monday Dr. A was back. He wanted to come and actually be present at the u/s that day to see for himself. It was possibly the longest u/s ever, A/S included. He and his med student and the u/s tech just kept looking for all of the details that he wanted. After a while, he looks at me and basically said, "When did you last eat? We're going to need to go ahead and deliver" When we saw him back in my room after, he said that we were in an "urgent but not emergent" scenario. They basically wanted to look at scheduling and go from there. Dr. A actually cleared his schedule for the evening so that he could personally do my c section. (I seriously love this man). So I fasted all day and at 8pm, we were ready to go. They took me in, got me all ready before bringing H in. I was terrified, I won't lie. The OR is a scary place to be, I felt so exposed (and literally was) just lying there, the spinal scared the crap out of me, but I just kept reminding myself why we're doing this. I felt such relief when H came in, a familiar and loving face. And then we got started.
I think I have pushed the blogger limits, haha and I have run out of space. So, to be continued!
