Had my BP follow up appointment at Duke Perinatal today. Even with 30mg of Procardia XL my BP was still 150/96. Boo. So we’ve upped it to 60mg. And yet again I’ve been told to contact them if I start having headaches or changes in vision.
The next day Zach wheeled me back to the NICU. I got to hold Rowan again. This time is when everything hit me. I sat there holding him and crying. Zach may have also teared up a little.
I wasn’t allowed to see him until after the mag was turned off. I was also not allowed to eat. Eventually I was at least allowed to have some sprite. At some point they helped me get from the bed to a chair. THAT was not fun. Not even a little fun.
I will give Duke credit, they were very onboard with trying an induction, and not jumping to c-section. Unfortunately Rowan was still sitting butt down, head up. So c-section it was. At the moment I was so so tired that I was resigned to this without too much internal struggle. They put yet another catheter in, and started the mag again. Around 8pm on the 28th I was wheeled down to the OR. They gave me the spinal block, which meant sitting on the edge of the table bent forward while they poked around next to my spine to find the perfect spot. Bonus was that the person who did it was clearly still learning, and they were maybe a little too eager about the fact that I have scoliosis. Listening to the head anesthesiologist explain to the person sticking needles in my back how to deal with the curvature, and listening to her discuss what she was feeling in my back was not really what I wanted at that moment. Then I felt like I was going to pass out. The nurse quickly braced me more carefully, and reminded me to breathe. Then it was done, and I was told to lie back. They shaved me, washed me, disinfected me, whatever the heck they were doing down there. Then I was told that the spinal was definitely working, because they just tested by poking me really hard, and that if it wasn’t working I would have jumped off the table.
It seemed like every few days something happened that made them start talking about delivery. But we would work it out with medications. Or they would be okay with whatever symptom because it was “just ____.” I was wondering how many “just” whatevers we could stack together before the pendulum swung. I had had headaches off and on that could be explained a million ways, but were making us all nervous. But they would eventually go away. I was never under any assumption that we would make it to 34 weeks. In my head I made 32 weeks my goal.
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.