A Baby Story

This is the story of my labor and delivery for those who are interested.  It's very long and potentially boring, just a warning...

Grace's birth story started on the morning of Thursday, April 30th.  I was at the doctor's office for a routine appointment when the nurse said my blood pressure was a little high at 127/92.  I wasn't too worried.  I've never had any sort of health problems and I figured it might have been because I was a little rushed in getting to my appointment.  A few minutes later, my blood pressure had lowered down to about 125/88.  My doctor was still concerned, especially because I also had a lot of swelling, so she ordered a battery of blood tests and asked me to collect a 24-hour urine (which I wasn't excited about, especially since Scott and I were planning on going to St. Louis that afternoon).  After discussing the situation with Scott and the doctor, it was decided to collect a 12-hour urine instead, so if it was fine we would still be able to go to St. Louis.

I continued my day as normal, except for the awkward task of collecting all of my urine in a big jug in my fridge.  This was quite a task considering I was drinking an average of 5 liters of water a day to try and ease my swelling.  Yuck.

Around 4 in the afternoon the nurse called and said something like this: "Your blood tests came back and they're not critical, but they're not ideal.  We'll probably want to monitor you more closely from now on."  Yes, it was that ambiguous.  No specifics, no explanations.  At that point I started to doubt the doctor would give permission for us to go to St. Louis, even though I felt fine.

Thursday night at 9 pm I dropped my jugs of urine at the hospital lab and awaited for the doctor's call.  An hour later it came and she said something like this: "You're urine test came back and it's not good.  I want you to go to the hospital so they can take some more blood tests tonight and we'll probably induce you tomorrow."  And this was my thought process: WHAT!?  But I said something like: "I'm not quite comfortable with that." To which my doctor brusquely let me know how pre-eclampsia is the number one leading cause of maternal death in pregnancy, blah blah blah blah... or that's what I heard.  This was the first time it was confirmed to me that I had pre-eclampsia, too.  BTW, my doctor is a worst case scenario doctor and isn't exactly known for her personable bedside manner, but she is very good at what she does.

So I went to the hospital to do the tests, fully expecting to go back home after to await my fate.  Little did I know, they ran the blood tests stat and the results came while I was still in the hospital and they had gotten worse since that morning.  My blood pressure also had continued to climb.  The doctor called and said she couldn't let me go home and that I would need to be admitted and monitored that night at the hospital.

During that awkward night at the hospital, the nurses came in every couple hours to check my blood pressure (which continued to not be good) and before 6 a.m. another battery of blood tests was drawn, which followed the pattern of progressively declining health.  I still was not told any details of my tests, but at this point I didn't care.  It had become obvious to me that I was not in a healthy place for me or my baby, and after a night of consideration and progressively worse health, I agreed that inducement was the best option.

At 9:00 a.m. I was hooked up to the IV of pitocin and manually dilated over the course of a couple hours.  My blood pressure was monitored every half hour from here on.  I was hooked up to 1) the IV on my left hand, 2) the blood pressure cuff on my right arm, 3) the baby heart monitor belt around my middle, 4) the contraction monitor belt around my middle and 5) the manual dilation tube between my legs. It was all pretty awkward.  After lunch the doctor came in and broke my water.

I had felt really crampy up to this point, and had had mild regular contractions, 3-5 minutes apart.  After lunch the contractions got progressively more painful, as expected.  What I didn't expect was this proof that I am a visual thinker: each contraction had a color and/or pattern associated with it in my mind.  They started out as shades of blue/gray, I hardly even noticed I was assigning the feeling a color until one of my contractions was a bright green.  The next one was pink, yellow and white candy striped.  Some of them were prettier than others, and somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I should try to remember these so I can use them at work.  One of my favorites was a lime green and brown paisley pattern.  Don't get me wrong, the contractions were painful.  I think this was just a way for my mind to cope with the pain by making it pretty.

It wasn't very easy to change positions because of all the wires and monitors attached to me and I needed a lot of help.  I tried different positions in the bed, sitting on the birthing ball and in a rocking chair.  In the end, the most comfortable position for me was sitting up in bed with my knees out and the soles of my feet together like a butterfly position, and pillows supporting my back.  

As the intensity of the contractions increased I focused the pain to a purpose.  When the pain was peaking I applied the pain as work towards opening my cervix and tried to relax the rest of my body.  I found that thought to be surprisingly helpful.  I also needed to hold Scott's hands during each contraction at the end.

Scott was an angel the whole time.  He had just the right words to say and knew just how to touch me to make me more relaxed.  I couldn't have done it without Scott.

Finally the time for pushing came.  The baby heart monitor around my middle was not being reliable, so the doctor put an internal monitor in the baby's scalp.  This whole part is kind of a blur.  I was pushing and stopping and pushing again.  The doctor said a lot of stuff to me I didn't catch.  There were a lot of nurses there.  A couple times the baby's heart dropped dangerously low so I was told to breathe through my contraction without pushing so the baby could get more oxygen.  Sometimes when I had a contraction and reached for Scott's hand, I got a nurse's hand instead.

And then she was out!  I felt relieved.  I was expecting to have to push again for the placenta, but the doctor gently pulled it out without me having to do anything.  She held it up for the nurses to see.  It was small and shriveled, and a dark, muddy red--this is not a good thing.  Then the doctor said I still had a section of the placenta in my uterus that had to be cut up and pulled out by hand.  That took about a half hour more, and it was not fun.

The doctor thinks the reason the pre-eclampsia came on so fast was because the placenta was failing.  Also, my placenta was split into two sections and only one section was connected to the baby and that might be why Grace was so small.  The doctor said the baby probably wouldn't have survived longer than a few more days in that environment.  The placenta was sent to the pathologist and the conclusion was that it was split because of a random mutation, not a disease or genetic disorder (thank goodness).

I feel blessed that the quick onset of pre-eclampsia was caught so early.  I'm grateful to the nurses and the doctor and Scott for helping me and Grace make it through without more serious complications.  I'm glad I didn't need surgery, even though I know it was a close call.  And finally, I'm so happy to have Grace home and safe and gaining weight! (She's 6 pounds already!)