I made it to 36 weeks + 4 with my daughter, I knew at 35 weeks something was not right with me. I had extreme stomach pain, loss of appetite, headaches and swelling that practically left me numb. Unfortunately the hospital I had near me didn’t realize and seemed to not care what was happening to me, I had gone 3 times within a week and they kept sending me home stating, ‘Your contractions aren’t accurate and you aren’t dilating past 3cm.
After the 3rd time enough was enough I decided to go home the next day to see my parents. I knew my Mom would provide me with comfort and help me through this awful pain as she had delivered 2 children previously. After a night of no sleep, extreme chills and constant pain my mom said something isn’t right and immediately took me to the hospital. This hospital immediately knew something was wrong and started setting me up, blood work after blood work after doctor they were starting to see everything turn for the worst, my blood pressure sky rocketed to 220/120, my blood platelets were dropping and had reached below 50,000 and my liver enzymes were starting to go which mean my liver was going into failure. At this point drugs were not an option. The doctors began giving my mother the options of drugs for my emergency c section as they stated if they allowed me to go any longer I would start to have seizures.
The options were for a small epidural that would most likely cause me to be paralyzed from the waist down or to be completely put under which could cause all my IV fluids and Magnesium (which helped in stopping seizures) to come back up into my lungs and cause distress and unfortunately high risk of death of baby and mom. But suddenly I started pushing on my own, before even having the chance to wheel me away for c section or decide on a drug plan my baby girl was delivered, she was quite a surprise and the doctors were shocked at how fast she came with no problems.
She was welcomed by 7 doctors and weighed 7 lbs 10 oz. What we thought would of been a 1-2 night stay ended up being 7 days. My blood pressure wasn’t dropping, and my blood work wasn’t getting any better. It was so emotionally hard to stay there as I just wanted to take her home, having my blood pressure taken every 2 hours was giving me extreme anxiety and half the time the nurses were running back and fourth calling for a doctor immediately due to the numbers coming in my blood pressure. My bloodwork was taken every 6 hours for an entire week, by day 3 the sound of the nurse coming with the bloodwork cart made me cry as almost all my veins were blown and it would take 45 minutes of constant ‘I promise this vein will work’ when it didn’t.
It took 2 months for my BP to finally go back to normal, but to this day I still stress and get emotional over everything that’s happened. We call my daughter our little miracle baby as she was delivered in under 4 hours, less than 20 minutes of pushing, it’s like she knew it was time – mom is sick and she needs to heal her.
Since day 1, I have constantly been asking myself, ‘Why me?’ I’ve always wanted a big family, I love babies, do I
not deserve it? Who did I hurt to have this happen to me? How come all these women are able to have normal pregnancies and deliver with no complications but yet I’m not able to? Is there anyone out there who has suffered like me? But now I know we are special and it makes me love her so much more.” ?
These are questions that many survivors have during the healing process. It’s powerful. They are, after all, part of the story. ?
The options were for a small epidural that would most likely cause me to be paralyzed from the waist down or to be completely put under which could cause all my IV fluids and Magnesium (which helped in stopping seizures) to come back up into my lungs and cause distress and unfortunately high risk of death of baby and mom. But suddenly I started pushing on my own, before even having the chance to wheel me away for c section or decide on a drug plan my baby girl was delivered, she was quite a surprise and the doctors were shocked at how fast she came with no problems.
stress and get emotional over everything that’s happened. We call my daughter our little miracle baby as she was delivered in under 4 hours, less than 20 minutes of pushing, it’s like she knew it was time – mom is sick and she needs to heal her.
