My November Baby became a September Baby!!!

I went in for a routine appointment on 9/14.  I'd had a headache for a few days that I simply chalked up to pregnancy hormones.  The nurse takes my vitals as always and my blood pressure was 171/100.  YIKES!  My doc hooked me up with some BP medication and told me to go home, take some Tylenol, and if the headache didn't subside within an hour or two, to check in to OB Triage at the hospital.  Did all that...including the checking in to triage after 2 hours when the headache hadn't gone away.  They hooked me up to the monitors and checked my BP every 10 minutes for like 2 hours.  My pressures came down steadily as I rested, so they let me go home with instructions to go back and see my OB on Monday.

On Monday, I go back in, blood pressure is better, but still on the high side, so the fear of preeclampsia was discussed. My OB decided he was going to call the MFM (Maternal Fetal Medicine) Specialists in Boise and send me in for a consult.

Tuesday morning, I get a call from my OB's office.  They tell me to pack a bag and head to Boise and check in at the hospital.  The hospital, not the MFM office.  Needless to say, I started to panic a little...my due date was November 10th.  I was checked in to the hospital the afternoon of 9/19.  The blood pressures were still all over the place. The started me on magnesium and another blood pressure medication and told me that an emergency c-section was a very real possibility if things didn't normalize.  As a precaution, they gave me a shot of steroids to help the baby's lungs develop on the 20th and 21st.

At around 8AM on the 22nd, the doctor came through for rounds and my blood pressure was still too high for his liking, not to mention a newly developing pulmonary edema.  The doctor made the call to take the baby at 33 weeks exactly.  I was wheeled into the operating room at 9:30, and at 10:16 my amazing, beautiful baby boy joined this world.

Despite concerns that his lungs may be underdeveloped, he was breathing on his own from his first breath.  The put him on a CPAP machine at 30% for a few hours, just to give him a little boost, and then removed it later that evening.  He spent one day under UV lights to bring his bilirubin down from 9 to 7.1.  He received fluids and sugars for a couple of days to bring his blood sugars to a good level and that was it for medical treatments. From that point on, it was simply about gaining weight and getting stronger. They added a feeding tube so that he was able to take in the proper amounts until he could feed well enough from a bottle.   We took him home after 19 days.