Alexandra's Birth
I had my 32 week appointment and I got told again to not eat salt or fast food, and I told my midwife again that I am not eating salt or fast food, I'm not even drinking anything with caffeine or sugar in it, my diet couldn't get any blander if I tried. She also said, don't eat so much your gaining too much. She didn't listen or thought I was lying, who knows right now I really don't care. I was also spilling protein, level 3, but then I guess she thought that I was doing thing I shouldn't and that the protein spill wasn't important.
I went back to work, I felt miserable. My boss was yelling at me because I would come in 1-10 minutes late, almost on a daily basis. I didn't want to tell him that I was having trouble moving around and driving because I was so bloated and was getting sick on the drive it. After all, my midwife didn't believe me, why should he? And without a doctor's note medical reasons aren't valid, and when I asked my midwife for one she laughed at me.
Anyway that was Thursday, by Monday I was feeling even worse. I was 2 minutes late and my boss jumped on my case about it. I had already been told that I would be docked for every minute that I was late and that none of my sick days would be paid unless I had a doctor's note, add to that the fact that he threatened to suspend me from work if I didn't "shape up". Anyway he jumped on my case, I kept my composure until I got to the bathroom, then I bailed. About 15 minutes later I was back at my desk calling my midwife. I wanted to be on bedrest or something I just needed to do something to try and alleviate all this stress this guy, and work in general, was giving me. The call didn't go well, they wanted me to come in and see the midwife, but I knew my boss wouldn't let me, so they said to go to the clinic if I still felt bad that night, just to check on the baby.
I finished work that day and started to drive home. I made it as far as my mother's house. I had called her earlier and told her about the call to the midwife. She knew what had been happening and met me at the door with a blood pressure cuff. It was something like 205 over 150, or some outrageous number. Needless to say that she drove me to the clinic. They checked my stats, I was spilling lots of protein at level 5 now and my blood pressure was not stabilizing. They had me lay down, they did an ultrasound to make sure the baby was ok and tried to get my BP to stabilize. All efforts were to no avail. They transferred me to a level 3 hospital and told me that I wasn't going to go back to work until after the baby was born. I was actually able to joke around with them and tell them that they could call my boss for me since I knew he would be pissed.
They ran more tests and tried to stabilize me, again, with no luck. So they decided to induce, talk about scary. I'm just glad that Jeremy was there by then. Well we started the induction but now the baby was having problems, so we had to do an emergency c-section. I don't remember much about it. I know that the epidural was not done correctly and acted like a spinal. I remember not being about to breath, and I remember feeling like I wasn't really there; kinda like the light at the end of the tunnel feeling. I remember hearing my daughter and seeing her. I remember thinking that she looked like an angel. I was in recovery for the next 24 hours. Then they moved me upstairs to a private room. It was nice and was on the same floor as my little girl. I had to have someone walk with me at first so that I could go to the NICU. She was born at 33 weeks gestation and weighed only 3 pounds and 5 ounces. She was so small.
I stayed at the hospital a total of 5 days, Alexandra stayed for 18. She came home with an apnea monitor. She weighed only 4 pounds.
~ Julie Moen