Sunday, November 10, 2013

Hello Beautiful People, and the Crazy Story of Preeclampsia

I'm fairly certain that nobody reads this, I am also fairly certain that someone has spilled something on my keyboard at sometime and I have some annoying sticky keys. Moving on..

At some point David and I had decided on having on last kid. We hoped to have a daughter, at least David did. It took 8 very long months of counting cycle days and ovulation tests and planned days of lovin' for the only purpose of conception. I was reading to give up and call it a frickin' day when I finally became pregnant in June 2012. Apparently since I was 35 I had to see a specialist, which was nice because I received lots of ultrasounds. Which also informed us that we were having another ,yay!, boy. David was rather sad and for the remainder of the pregnancy was quite sadly disconnected from it. Little depressing. The pregnancy was hard on me and I slept ALOT. By late January I was told that my blood pressure was quite elevated, and didn't go down with regular interventions. Lab tests showed preeclampsia. I was ordered on bed rest to keep my blood pressure down. Seriously, nothing makes me want to do stuff than being told to do nothing. Boring!!!! And sad. I had to have regular non stress tests where they listen to baby heart beat over a determined period. Thankfully all was wonderful with baby. I was the one at risk. They hoped to keep me on bed rest until my early March due date. Unfortunately I began having severe headaches at night from blood pressure spikes. After a few days of intolerable pain I was admitted to the hospital for them to try to get the blood pressures down and ease my headaches somehow. No such luck. I was induced on February 12, 2013, 5 weeks early. The epidural eased my pain and headache like a wonderful godsend. Though they had to give me something to bring my blood pressure up since the epidural made it drop too low, go figure. I didn't ever realize that baby Joshua was crowning.

He was born in the late morning, just a wee thing under 5 pounds. I got to kiss him quickly prior to being whisked away to the NICU. Because at that time I was apparently bleeding out all my blood. My BP got as low as 70/40 and I wondered if I might die. I remember being so sleepy, sleepier than I ever had been. It took all I had to force myself to stay awake. David was next to me looking a bit scared, I learned later that he called my sister crying that he thought he was going to lose me. Anyway, for what seemed like a very long time there were lots of nurses and the Dr. in the room doing a lot of massaging of my abdomen to help stop bleeding. The Dr. even placed her entire hand into my uterus to ensure there were no more placenta parts in there .
Fortunately I did not end up requiring a blood transfusion but was quite weak and tired for a few days afterward. I didn't get to see Joshua again until the next day. He looked so tiny and helpless hooked up to so many tubes and monitors, I cried feeling like it was all my fault. While all the other post partum moms had their crying infants with them I was all alone. I felt like I had been through the wringer and had nothing to show for it. The Dr. let me go home after a few days so I could be with my family and not sad at the hospital.
Joshua remained there for 2 weeks, he was a sleepy boy and didn't want to stay awake to eat so they had to place a tube in his nose down to his stomach so they could get the food in him. It was a depressing couple weeks. Then, of course, one day before he was due to be discharged I ended up in the emergency dept. with severe vertigo/ nausea and vomiting. Sometimes, you just get kicked when your down, you know? They fixed me up and Joshua as well and he was able to come home in late February. Home to his family where he belongs. :)

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