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This was my first pregnancy, it was almost perfect. I never got sick through |
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This was my first pregnancy, it was almost perfect. I never got sick through out the entire pregnancy, I had great blood pressure every time I had a check up I never had protein in my urine. This story takes place when I was 36 weeks pregnant. Over the past few weeks I was starting to swell all over. I would try my best to prop my feet up nightly but they would swell right back up as soon as I started walking around again. On Tuesday May 18th I started to come down with what I though was a cold. I actually thought it was allergies at first, because it was spring time, until I took a Zyrtec and I didn't get any relief. That Friday May 21st at around 1:00 in the morning I started having horrible pains on the top of my stomach. So bad that I couldn't find any position that was comfortable enough to sleep for more than 30 min. at a time. I wasn't sure why I was having this pain. I tried to take a bath to ease the pain and it only helped while I was in the tub. My husband asked if I was having contractions, but I said no because the pain never went away it was constant. I gave up on sleeping and sat in our living room and watched TV the rest of the night. Come Saturday mid morning I started to feel a little bit better. I was extremely tired. I laid on the couch all day and slept. By afternoon the pain had gone away completely. I was feeling back to myself that night and my husband and I went out and got a bite to eat. Saturday night when I was heading to bed I had a really bad headache. This was weird to me as I had not had a headache in months. I took some Tylenol and went to bed hoping it would be gone in the morning. Sunday May 23rd I woke up and felt like a new person, no problems at all. My husband and I went to church, shopping, and out to lunch for the day. When we got back I cleaned the house and felt great. Monday the 24th came along, I went to school (I am a teacher) and on my drive in my stomach started to bother me again. As the kids started to arrive for the day the pain in the upper part of my stomach came back and I started to become very uncomfortable. I thought to myself there must be something wrong for this pain to be happening again. I went to my front office and told them that I had to call my Dr.. I left a message with my Dr. and waited for them to call back. I laid down in the nurses office while waiting for the Dr. to call. Once the Dr. called I explained to them what was going on with me over the past few days. They said it might be my gallbladder. I told them I was to have my 36 week check up the next day, Tuesday, but would like to come in today because I was in so much pain. They squeezed me in for an appointment. at 1:30 that afternoon, it was now 10:00. I called my husband and had him come and pick me up because I was not feeling well enough to drive. While I waited for him to arrive I laid in the nurses office, at one point I vomited. This made me more concerned, not knowing what was wrong with me. My husband picked me up around 10:30. We had some time until my 1:30 appointment so we went home and changed into more comfortable clothes. As soon as we arrived at our house I vomited again. I decided to lay down to try and relieve some pain. I fell asleep for about 30 min. My husband asked me if we should pack a suite case in case we should have to stay for some monitoring. I said yes lets do that, so he attempted to back for both of us as I was feeling to ill to do anything. 1:30 came and we were at my appointment. I was in so much pain I couldn't even sit in the room I had to lay down. I had a urine sample and it showed large traces of protein. They took my blood pressure and it was very high. The Dr. said they didn't want to do anything else, they wanted to omit me to the hospital and put me under observation. They wheeled me over to the hospital. As soon as I got into the delivery room I vomited again. The nurse took blood and sent it to the lab. While we waited for the blood results they did an ultrasound of my organs. All looked good on the ultrasound. When my blood work got back we found out that my blood platelets were 15 times what they should have been and that I had preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. I had never heard of either of these conditions and didn't know anything about them. The Dr. then proceeded to tell my husband and I about both preeclampsia and HELLP. As they are telling us about them they also shared our worst case scenarios, death. The only way to help me was to get the baby out within the next hour via a C-section. This of course was a complete shock to my husband and I and we both began to cry. We asked if we could have a minute to ourselves to take this all in. We quickly called our families to let them know what was happening. The Dr. came back within minutes to introduce me to the anesthesiologist. Since they had to get the baby out so quickly they had to put me under a local anesthetic. This was upsetting to my husband because he could not come back to the operating room with me. At this point I don't think I really realized how much danger I was in with my condition, I was more worried about the baby. They wheeled me into the operating room and I had to say my goodbyes to my husband. He walked back into the delivery room and had to wait for an hour by himself as our family all live out of state. This was very hard for him and emotional. I came out of the operating room an hour later with a healthy 5lbs 3oz. baby boy. He was perfect for being 36 weeks old and got to stay in our room with us for the entire 5 days that we were at the hospital. I however didn't feel all that wonderful. I was extremely tired and very out of it. In fact I just told my husband the other day that I can't even recall the first time I saw my son. I was so out of it I can't remember that precious moment. The first 3 days we were at the hospital we stayed on the delivery side so they could keep a close eye on me. I had to be put on magnesium and had to be given 2 blood platelets to try to get my liver back to where it should be. I was feeling much better the third day and we got to move to the postpartum side of the hospital. My son did a great job of gaining weight quickly while we were there. As of now at 3 months, we are both doing great! |
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