My Birth Story Part I: Can We Do This Another Day?
Last day of Pregnancy
On January 11, 2011 I went to work on a mission. I suddenly felt the urge to clean up and out my desk. Suddenly I was shredding old records, packing a bag of all my important info to take home, and leaving things as clean as they were gonna get. I had no idea why I felt this urge, but I did.
On January 12, 2011 I slept in late because I had a doctors appointment that day. I thought about going to work until my doctors appointment but all the walking gave me pause. I was tired. Real tired. I had a lot of extra amniotic fluid I was carrying around and I was miserable whenever I had to do anything but lie down. Welp, I caught a cab to the doctors office and headed for my sonogram. I was in total disbelief. The baby was head down for the past 6 weeks but suddenly decided to go breech! Ugh. So I headed upstairs to see my doctor. The nurse took my blood pressure and I asked "so, is it high?". My blood pressure had been excellent the entire time, but I felt funny that day. I had the strangest headache. She said "yeah, it’s really high!". Well, my doctor took a look at that and also at the fact that I suddenly had protein in my urine and sent me to the hospital. He said I needed to be monitored. I said "well, see, I hadn’t really planned on having a baby today, so if could just hold off until tomorrow that would be great!". He thought I was joking. I wasn’t. That didn’t stop him from sending me to the hospital immediately.
My husband came and picked me up and to the hospital we went. I got there about 2:30 and into the room around 3. My blood pressure was still high but we felt confident that they were going to send me home. A doctor came in to see me and she said OMG you must be miserable! Carrying around all that fluid, you poor thing. I teared up ’cause I felt like FINALLY someone understood! During my 3rd trimester I tried hard not to complain because i’m not the first woman to have a baby, but walking 5 feet had me in pain and downright miserable! Thank God it wasn’t all in my head. Because of all the extra fluid AND my blood pressure continuing to be high, she told me the chance of me walking out of there was slim to none. Ultimately it was our choice if we wanted to wait it out or get things moving. I think hubby was scared of not only there being something wrong with the baby if she wasn’t ready to come out, but also of suddenly being a dad so soon. After much discussion and him having my call my aunt who’s a nurse to find out what she thought, we decided to go for it. At 7:15 they started to prep me for my c-section. Having a vaginal delivery was next to impossible because there was so much room and fluid in my uterus that the baby was still doing summersaults so she probably would’ve ended up breach or some other weird position. So, I changed into my gown, they gave hubby his gown and pants, and off to prep I went.