Out of the Blue

Posted On Saturday, April 23, 2011  by kristin

Eloise was born at 24 weeks and 5 days. I had a very normal pregnancy until week 23. Friday, March 25^th, I woke up very early, around 3am, and felt something was wrong. I quickly found I was bleeding and got very scared. My husband was out of town on a church retreat so I was home alone. So, I called my parents who called an ambulance. I was rushed to the hospital. My husband was finally located and rushed back to to town by a friend.

The doctors found that my normally low blood pressure had sky rocketed so I was kept Friday night for observation. I also received a steroid shot so that Eloise could develop a little faster since the doctors felt she would come early. Saturday afternoon I was sent home with blood pressure medicine and put on bed rest. Early Monday morning I woke up again with back pain; not an incredibly unusual thing. Unable to sleep I went to the living room and took some Tylenol. Within an hour, I had a horrible headache and decided to wake my husband up and head back to the hospital.

My blood pressure was once again very high. I was diagnosed with preeclampsia in the 2^nd trimester. The decision was made to transfer me to another hospital that specialized in high risk pregnancies. When I arrived, I was immediately placed on magnesium and more blood pressure medicine. We were told I would be here for the duration of the pregnancy which hopefully would be a few weeks. My husband stayed all that week until Thursday when I insisted he go to work. Thursday afternoon, I was sitting in the hospital bed visiting with my parents and my pastor when the doctor came in. She explained my blood work that morning didn’t look good. My liver was having issues from the blood pressure which was staying around 170 though had been around 200. The pregnancy would likely only be a few more days or, at worse, hours. My husband was immediately called back to my side.

Late Thursday night, I was about to take her evening medicine and my husband was getting into bed. The nurse had left for a moment and I stated the room just spun around. My husband asked lots of questions but I couldn’t really give him an answer. He told the nurse this when she returned. Within minutes, I went into a seizure. My husband was taken out of the room while nurses and doctors worked on me; shortly after went into a second seizure. The pregnancy was now too dangerous to continue and an emergency c-section had to occur.

I was wheeled into an operating room, unaware of what was going on. I delivered my baby girl at 1:27am Friday morning… just one week after any signs of preeclampsia and hours after eeclampsia. I was the first person in my family to have preeclampsia. We have no history of high blood pressure, diabetes, or seizures. There was no way to know what was going to happen. My daughter, however, is doing very well at 3 weeks of age. She is surprising all the doctors. I can’t wait to bring her home in July, her real due date.