Oliver's Story

Posted On Thursday, November 18, 2010  by Tamika

Where to start, we are about to celebrate my beautiful son's first birthday and as exciting time as it should be I feel overwhelmed with emotions on his early arrival due to Preeclampsia.  Oliver's story starts as most do with a pretty uneventful first 28 weeks where I had no problems at all only the occasional morning sickness bout. 

My blood pressure had started hovering up around 26 weeks and the hospital I attended asked me to come back at 28 weeks. At that point there wasn't really much to worry about my blood pressure was borderline I had slight traces of protienuria but still within normal ranges.  At 28 weeks they decided a few days resting in hospital was the go whilst they got me started on some aldomet to control the BP, I had scans done in this time of baby Oliver and my kidneys and everything looked good, they estimated his size at 2p 7oz which is good for his gestation.  I was sent home but began having weekly check ups.  Everything was moving along well until 31 weeks when I was agian hospitalized this time until our darling boy would be delivered.  I was given steriod shots and then sent for another scan to check his weight gain, it was here that the alarm bells started ringing. Our little man had not grown at all since his 28 week scan. I was 31+4 days and my hospital is a level 3 only taking Special Care Neonates from 32 weeks.  It was decided that Monday morning I would be induced and deliver him the way I wanted to. 

Later on the sunday night before induction after many hours of trying to get him to move being hooked to a CTG it was apparent that he was going into distress and it was time for an emergency c-section.  At 12:57am Oliver Thomas entered the world weighing in at 1250grams, head circumference 28cm, 42cm long and breathing. His apgar scores at 1 and 5 minutes were 9 & 9.  Other then his size he had no troubles and was home 6 weeks later 2 weeks before his due date.  I however suffered for 7 days after with managing my blood pressure and waiting for the proteing to leave my kidneys.  I am still an outpatient at our hospital as I still have traces (although they are within the "normal ranges" my specialist wants to keep me under watch so that when I choose to have another he will be able to monitor me closer from the start) and my little preemie is still small for his age but did everything early crawling at 7.5 months actual age and now almost walking at 11 months (12 months in a few days).  I was lucky that they caught my preeclampsia and were able to manage it until my son was dilivered although I want another 2 babies I will be happy to get through another 1 and leave it at that.  I was so happy to find this site so far just reading all your stories has made me feel soooooooo much better.