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!
Re: Allison's Story (long)
Congratulations!!