Birth Stories

Allison's Story (long)

Allison Ellamae was born 7/23/09 (40w4d) and weighed 6 lbs 14 oz, 20 in long.  My pregnancy was pretty typical but I started to have mild blood pressure increases during the last week.

The morning prior I started to lose my MP, but was only noticing some mild cramping at that point so I still went into work that day.  After I got home around 5pm I started to notice a few contractions here and there, but they were very far apart so DH and I went about our normal evening.  Around 2:30am I woke up with the contrax stronger and more frequent so I decided to let DH sleep and went to labor in the other room and started timing them- they were still a good 5-10 min apart.  Around 4:30am I felt a small gush during one particularly painful contrax and ran to the bathroom- my water breaking.  So we called the Dr and went on in to L&D.  Contrax were about 2-3min apart in the car and were starting to get very painful.  I got checked in and the nurses hooked me up to the monitors- here's where things started getting bad.  They couldn't confirm that my water broke and the monitors were not picking up the contrax very well- I was also only 3cm and clearly in more pain than I should have been.  My BP was way too high though- 160s/100s, and when the Dr came by to check me I had my bloody show- and tons of fluid just leaking out- turns out my water broke up high and it was just slowly trickling out.  I got a shot of stadol for the pain- very wild stuff- while I waited to be admitted.  They started me on a Magnesium drip for the pre-eclempsia and I got the epidural shortly after that- it was the least painful part of the entire labor process.  The Drs were concerned about the velocity of the contrax though- the LOs HR was dropping with each contrax but the monitors didn't indicate that they were strong.  So I had 2 internal monitors placed, and they repositioned LOs once.  During the next 10 minutes they continued to watch my contrax and the LOs HR, had me try out different positions, but I was still only 5cm dilated and LO was decelling severely.  They felt there was no choice but to go immediately for a C-section.  I was very upset; I had never thought that I wouldn't be able to deliver vaginally.  They wheeled me in and had the baby out super quick- DH was great during the whole thing and Allison turned out just fine.

My post-op was he!! however.  I ended up staying 5 days in the hospital due to severe anemia from the blood loss, BP issues, and an ileus.  The pain and the swelling was awful.  They told me later on that I had a placental abruption with several infarctions which is why the contrax were so painful and the baby couldn't get blood/oxygen through the dead tissue.

It's been a week however and I am recovering pretty well.  BFing was challenging at first b/c of the C-section pain, but we have gotten the hang of it and Allison has surpassed her birthweight already.  I'm still taking pain meds around the clock, but my BP has normalized, I finally was able to poo, and I'm down 20 of the 28 lbs I gained during the pregnancy already.  My blood counts are coming up very slowly and I still get dizzy walking around, but my family has been very supportive.

All in all I feel a little cheated about not being able to birth normally, but then I just think about how we would have lost her otherwise. 

Thanks for letting me share!

image

image

Re: Allison's Story (long)

This discussion has been closed.
Choose Another Board
Search Boards
"
"