Its been a crazy few months we were busy planning a trip to Victoria, 2 birthday parties and personally I was trying to learn how to deal with reflecting on Miles birth a year ago.
Its interesting, most moms look back on the day there baby was born and remember emotions like excitement, nervousness, happiness not me, not a preemie mom. When I try and remember the days leading up to and the birth of our son I'm over come with fear, anxiety, sadness...most people cant understand this and say but look at him now he is doing amazing which is true and I'm so very thankful of this you have no idea BUT it doesn't change how I felt that day and how I still feel and am trying to deal with now I'm sad my body failed, I'm sad my baby had to struggle and feel pain, I'm sad he had to live in a isolate I'm MAD that I didn't get to experience a happy birth and take him home right away. But it is what it is and the doctors and machines saved my little mans and my life and I will be forever grateful.
Most people don't know exactly what happened to lead to Miles' birth so here are all the wonderful details for anyone wondering.
On June 25 after work I headed to my now routine No stress test to make sure beans heart was doing well. I got set up and then the dreaded blood pressure test, I had been having high BP and was already on meds to help it I mostly new it was going to be higher then what they like every time. Beep beep beep the machine is going nuts, ugh my BP is higher then healthy so the alarms sound, the nurse gets the doctor and its decided we need to head to L&D to be monitored a bit more. Now this had happened the last 2 Fridays in the row so I called Brian and let him know where to meet me for date night. We got all hooked up in L&D and had my BP taken every 15 minutes which wow its not fun having your arm squeezed like that non stop. After 6 hours, an ultrasound a few doctors it was decided they wanted to have me do a 24 hour urine to see if I was spilling more protein, this is a sign that I'm getting pre-eclampsia. When you spill protein it means your liver and kidney are starting to fail due to the high BP and the ONLY cure to this is delivery. So instead of sending me home the On call Doc said she wanted to admit me for 23 hour observation / collection then we would go from there.
So we are moved at like 9 pm to a gorgeous Labor room it was huge Brian had his own pull out, we had a giant bathroom and a nice view hehe. Then come the blood draws...this was traumatizing I hate needles but I knew it was important so just toughed it out for the baby but now they had such a hard time find veins. I was a literal pin cushion, they have a 2 try rule for nurses, after 2 fails they have to get a nother person to try.....I had 4 try and fail before they called the Blood draw clinic to send someone up. It was horrid but done (I pretty much went through this every 4 hours). I also got shot 1 of the steroids for the babies lungs to develop just in case and they put me on Magnesium sulfate to help bring down my BP as it was worrisome high, (the mag is horrid it feels like your skin is burning). We got settled and went to bed. Just for the record bed rest in the hospital is not rest at all I was woken up every 4 hours day and night for tests, not my ideal of rest.
So Saturday, I got the second steroid shot and we just hung out together figuring once 6ish hit we would be cleared to go, they had upped my BP meds and though my BP was still high it wasn't alarm setting which was a positive. So we hit the 23 hours and the doctor comes in and tells me okay now we will run the urine...this could take a day to get the numbers and we are just going to keep you until we get those back. Okay now we are settled in for night 2 and pretty much just want to go home. We waited all day Sunday and kept asking if they knew anything ....nothing....nothing...5 pm rolls around and we get word of the numbers....its not great. I'm showing all the early signs of Pre-E and they want to keep monitoring me and the baby so they let us know they are going to move us upstairs to a Anti- partum room cause we didn't need such one on one attention. So we wave good bye to our nice room and get upstairs to a tiny room with a couch for Brian no blankets or pillows a view of a darn building...lovely. The nurses didn't even know I was there for 4 hours Brian and I are like please let us go home soon lol.
Monday, in the morning we got to be wheeled down to the Ultrasound room so we could get a growth scan of the bean and make sure everything was ok. It was nice to see our baby and we finally after like 12 ultrasounds got a profile shot! After that we just hung out, bored, my BP was chilling I felt fine we were starting to wonder why we were even here. SO in walks the on call and funny enough it was my old doctor who had told me that I would never conceive without fertility treatments and here I was naturally preggers! Anyways we basically asked if we could just go home on bed rest and just come back if anything changes and he tells us they just don't want to send me home in this limbo state...not full Pre-E but not ok. My BP meds had gone from 400mls a day to over 1600 so there was a reason my BP had somewhat settled but I just didn't want to be there anymore. After some talking Brian and I figured that even tho they wouldn't say it, we were going to be in the hospital for the long haul, which I dealt with cause I knew Bean was going to be taken care of. We decided Brian didn't need ot miss work to sit and watch TV all day with me so he went home and got his stuff together so he could go to work on Tuesday.
Tuesday, (warning this section might be TMI for some) Brian got up for work at 6 and hopped in the shower. I started feeling really crampy so I got up to got to the bathroom I saw a bit of blood but not a lot and got back in bed. A nurse came in and said hey cause your awake lets do your NST now I said she and let her know what was going on, she didn't seem worried. Brian got ready and left, I was still cramping alot and the nurse came in and said "are you feeling those" meaning I was contracting. I told her yes that i had been feeling them since 6 at this point they were coming every 5 minutes. A doctor came in and said she was going to check me and see if anything was happening. They got all set up and as she was about to start the exam I felt a gush I asked "did my water just BREAK???" She says I don't think so but I will run a test to see, ok w/e. So she is doing her thing and omg it hurt so bad to be "checked" I thought she was about to poke her arm through my body. Sorry anyways she said I'm just a bit dilated and she wanted to grab a ultrasound to look at the baby. I'm not contracting every 3 minutes and I remember asking if I could go pee as I REALLY needed to, she said after the ultrasound. So she does the scan and notices over night sometime baby had flipped from being head down to completely Breech...lovely. She finished and I got up to use the restroom and I look back and saw what my gush was...there was blood everywhere I was freaking out and all alone. I called Brian and of course no answer I left a terrifying message and just sobbed. He finally called back and I was in tears as he tells me he is on his way, I remember I was contracting every 2 minutes and telling him I cant talk it hurts it hurts.
Nobody told me what they were going to do or what was going on I figured they were going to just try and stop it. Just as Brian walked in the Nurse came in and told us they were going to move us back down to the Labor room so we could be monitored a bit closer, Brian grabbed our stuff and we were being moved. At this point it was 10AM, we get down stairs and hooked up, more blood draws my BP was alarming like crazy, we are talking its getting to 200/110 (normal would be 120/80). At 11 a doctor came into our room and said you are very sick, the only cure for Pre-E is delivery and because your baby is breech we will be doing a C-section, we ask when she said they would get us in at 12. WHAT??? how is this happening. I was so scared for my baby it was too soon, how would the breathe this cant be happening not to us. Brian called his mom and I begged for him to ask for a camera as we had nothing. I had him call my mom and dad and explain what was going on cause I couldn't get the words out, after he handed me the phone and I just sobbed. They both gave me words of comfort and were both left on the other end of the phone terrified and helpless for their daughter and grandchild.
At 11:30 I was being prepped we said goodbye to Brians mom talked with anesthesiologist, neonatologist, and surgeons. Brian got his scrubs and I was being wheeled away. I got into this cold scary room and sat on a table, I had a wonderful nurse who just hugged me while I got my spinal. I got laid down, screen up, a bunch of people talking to me and I have no idea what was said. Then I hear the doctor "Okay we are ready to start everyone ready, is dad here?" from behind my screen with a soft scared child voice I say "noooo". They went out and got Brian and by the time he got in the room they already had started cutting to get him out. There was so many people in the room a team for my c-section, a NICU team, a team in case I seized from the Pre-E and a crash team. Brian says there was just shoulder to shoulder people around my body, he couldn't see anything. I would guess upwards to 25 people in that little room, maybe more. Anyways I got tugged at and shook I remember feeling so incredibly sleepy and overwhelmed but thinking I cant sleep my baby is coming....he is going to be so sick....he might die... Just then we heard that tiny beautiful sound I will never forget, not a newborn scream but this little bitty billy goat cry....our baby! we hear time of delivery 12:52pm and a nurse says they didn't know the sex "Oh! its a boy!!". Our boy! He is hear and he is alive and crying!
I remember saying to Brian you can go over there, go see him as they clean him up. The next thing I know they rolled by my head said "hey mom" I looked and there was a peek of my little man and boy was he so beautiful and off they went I said to Brian "you stay with him, don't let him be scared, go" They got me cleaned up and I don't remember much of anything. I was put back on the Mag so I wouldn't have a seizure while they waited to see if my BP would come down. Brian brought me a picture the NICU nurses took for me that I just held onto for dear life I was so sad I couldn't keep him in and safe and now he was alone in a strange place without his mommy. I wouldn't get to see him for another day and a half as I wasn't allowed to leave my bed cause of how sick I was.
With that I was alone, no baby in my belly, no baby in my arms, just a picture of my baby, my little boy. Happy Birthday Miles, it may not have been a perfect birth day and its ok to be sad about that, but you are here and you are doing amazing and I'm forever grateful to anyone who got you here.
