I was scheduled for a follow up appointment for a nonstress test for the baby (who had been perfect on the monitors thus far) on Friday the 17th. At the end of the appointment the nurse did a BP check. High. The doctor decided to draw some labs. At first she said they would draw them there. But when I mentioned my face had been a bit puffy that morning, she quickly decided to send me over to Duke to have the labs drawn, so the results could be in within an hour.
At this point I was operating under the idea that if I wasn’t ruptured that I could go home the next day. But the next day they were still not convinced. Despite the fact that my underwear had been 100% dry. No blood, no fluid. So that day was just monitoring. The next morning when the doctor came in, I asked her why we were still concerned about rupture. She agreed that she really didn’t think I was ruptured. So they stopped ABX. At this point I thought maybe I would be freed! But then they went back to the initial issue of the bleeding. Because of the diagnosis of mild preeclampsia they suspected the bleeding was a partial placental abruption. So they wanted me to stay another day or two to monitor for any more bleeding. Finally on Wednesday, April 15th, I was released.
Right around midnight the EMTs arrived to transport me to Duke. I’d never been in an ambulance before! They were very nice and managed to keep me calm. We arrived at Duke, and a doctor there checked me. He said I was only the outer os was dilated, so that was good. This doctor also couldn’t tell if my water had broken. He used a giant q-tip to gather whatever fluid he could and put it on a slide. They check for something called “ferning” on the slide, to see if there was amniotic fluid. He said that there was no ferning on the slide. But yet, they still kept going with the idea that I was ruptured. So they started IV antibiotics. In the meantime my blood pressure was high, so they collected some urine to check for protein. It turned out I was spilling a bit of protein, so I was officially diagnosed with mild preeclampsia.
April 11th was the day of Lorelei’s birthday party. I spent most of that day, and the day before, on my feet. But I was pregnant, not sick! Little did I know. After the party Charlotte and I went out and got dinner and had a lovely girls’ night. We got home around 8:30 pm, and I went to the bathroom.