21 weeks 2 days

I think this will be one of the hardest post to write - so I am going to get it out of the way early.

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April 23rd, 2009 - 21 weeks + 2 days pregnant with Vincent. When I went to sleep the night before I had a pit on my calf from grant standing on my leg for a few minutes. The 20 pound dog left a perfect paw indentation that lasted 2 hours. Then I fought through the gray haze of vision to go to sleep. I woke up and my vision was fine! But my foot was still extremely swollen.

My hubby looked at my feet and told me to take the day off. I figured I should go in- because I wanted to run by my OBs office for a check up. See - I was already high risk. My BP was borderline going into pregnancy at 130/80 - but just crept up consistently during the pregnancy. Amazingly I look back at my records and see at this point I had BPs of 160/100 for 1.5 weeks - and was still allowed to work on call. :sigh: can we say negligence? anyway.... I was supposed to see a high risk OB on Monday - it was Thursday. Everything had to be fine somehow. Yet as I was getting ready for work, I grabbed my OB card and some reading material .

I left the house with the hubby, it was the last time I would be in the house with Vincent alive. I walked into work - without ever thinking I would be there for over a week - the joys of working in a hospital. My boss asked me how I was doing. He is a nephrologist (kidney dr.). I mentioned I was really swollen - he knew about my BP issues. He asked to see my feet - took one look at them and told me to call my dr. ever the scientist I asked him how to classify the swelling - he said moderate and it was only 9 a.m. - call now.

Of course the OB office wanted me to come in. I knew what was going on- but I still had so much hope.

I got to the office and they quickly called me back away from all the happy smiling pregnant faces. Urine showed a +2 protein - BP 198/110. Yep, everything just got royally fucked. My OB came out and met me at the BP area- I didn't even get a room. She told me to get to labor and delivery now.

I called my hubby and told him to leave work. I had done my research - I knew this was severe pre-eclampsia. I cried telling him we were going to lose the baby. He told me to wait and see what the dr.;s said - but I knew.

I cried on a bench just waiting for him to get there. When he showed up - we drove the 5 minutes to the hospital. Got through admitting. Got settled into a triage room in L&D. First round of blood work was drawn and BP measurements were taking constantly. I was giving fast acting meds to lower my BPs that the hubby said were occasionally as high as 200/120. A nurse sat in the corner just watching the readings. 30 minutes later my labs came back with elevated liver enzymes. Now the show started and first the resident and the MFM attending came in. The resident was telling me we were trying to stabilize me and if I could stabilize we could try to eek out a few more weeks. The MFM gently piped in that a few more weeks wouldn't be enough- we had a long way to go still. Of course if they couldn't stabilize me - I would need a c-section that day. They kept telling the hubby that this was life threatening for me as well as the baby.

The next set of labs showed my liver enzymes were trending downwards. Now the OB on the admitting floor came in to tell me there was a great chance the baby wouldn't survive. All the doctors were very gently when delivering this news. But this doctor kept his hand on my knee and just let me cry for a few minutes. Then he told me I was off to get an u/s - start a 24 hour urine and be admitted in teh antenatal unit.

The ultrasound quite frankly sucked. The tech told me I was having contractions - WTF? My fluid was low and baby was measuring 2 weeks behind. It was hard to hear that news.

I got settled into my room around 7 pm. I was to have BP checked every 4 hours, baby heart rate as well - except night when I could sleep 6 hours without BP checks.

Every doctor was very kind, very compassionate. They weren't gloom and doom, but they were not offering any false hope as well. I layed in the bed wondering how the fuck this happened. We wanted thi sbaby so badly, I did everything right, now we were losing him slowly.... and there wasn't a damn thing we could do.

The hubby went and got my drinks for the night and stalked my refrigerator with gatorade and ginger ale and brought me magazines - and even hid teh ones he noticed with pregnant celeb articles on the front.

The awful beginning to the end.

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Today I am 21 weeks - 2 days with Sprout . We are having a relaxing day me and him. Watching some home renovation shows to see if there is anything I can do on bed rest. Reading some of teh new King book - very very good and preparing for a bath. Today is a good day :)