My Pregnancy Experience
Early Maternity Leave – 35 Weeks
Around 35-weeks my feet started to swell after my 12-hour shifts. I thought to myself well I am pretty far along, and I was on my feet for 12 hours, I’ll just chalk it up to that and kept going about my day. I worked a Thursday night to a Friday morning and my feet and ankles were very swollen and I was exhausted – again I said 12-hours on my feet at 35-weeks pregnant, I’ll just get some sleep and see how I feel. I woke up earlier than I normally would because my husband and I were going to go to Costco and on a little day date since the time of it just being us was starting to come to a close. It was about a 45-minute car ride, when I got out at the restaurant my feet were already swollen, I didn’t want to alarm my husband, so we kept the day as planned.
We arrived at Costco, and I didn’t feel right I began to feel nauseous and dizzy, still I didn’t say anything until we were done and told him I would go home and get some sleep, I was trying to reason with myself and think all my symptoms were from being overtired and very pregnant. My husband went to work, and I woke up from a nap felt better but my feet were still swollen. I messaged by OB nursing professor about what had been going on and she said I should probably go and get my blood pressure checked. I went to see my co-workers and had them take my blood pressure I had readings that were 140s/90s, so I called up to OB and gave them my blood pressure readings and they told me medication intervention didn’t start blood pressure readings of 155/105, so I was going to just go home. The charge nurse from OB called down to my charge Rebecca and they wanted me to come up to get evaluated.
After all the tests were ran, I was told I had pre-eclampsia. This is diagnosed by protein content in urine and elevated blood pressure readings. I said well, “I have to work Sunday and Monday” – the OB let me know that wouldn’t be happening and that I would need to go on my maternity leave early starting that day. For the next week I had to go back and forth to the hospital for monitoring, I was downgraded to gestational hypertension since I didn’t have a history of hypertension pre-pregnancy.
I finally saw my midwife and she asked me “how do you feel about being induced next Wednesday night?” I was so over all the back and forth of monitoring and hospital visits I said, “yes let’s do it”. Not that I had much of a choice because it is not advisable to let mom’s go over 37-weeks with high blood pressure as it decreases the integrity of the placenta.
Induction to C-Section
Fast-forward to my Wednesday night induction. I arrived at the hospital at 8:30 p.m. I went to my room, and we started to process of meeting our little boy. I had many rounds of cytotec inserted, walked the halls and finally decided to fall asleep as things weren’t progressing very fast.
Thursday morning arrived and so did my midwife. To get things moving she placed a Cooke Balloon to help me dilate. Mind you I didn’t want to get an epidural but after that, I was so uncomfortable I got that epidural. Don’t be a superhero, make sure you are as comfortable as possible. I absolutely loved my day nurse; she was all about doing all the things to help me progress. I did ask her if it would be possible for me to get a different night nurse. If I was having this baby that night I didn’t want my previous night nurse to be my nurse, I was not confident in her ability. She said, “say no more.” That night I had a new nurse that was just as great at my day nurse of making sure we were doing everything to get this baby out.
Around 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, the Cooke Balloon fell out (meaning I had dilated to 5-6 cm) my nurse told me my options of what was to come next; I could either have the on-call midwife come in and break my water or they could start Pitocin. I didn’t want Pitocin started right away so I elected for the midwife to come in and break my water. A call was made around 6 o’clock Thursday night to have the on-call midwife come assess me and possibly break my water. That midwife did not come in or call back until around 3:00 a.m. Friday morning. So all that time I was stagnant at about 6 cm dilated.
Morning rounds start and the midwife came in and told me she didn’t need to come in because she looked over my chart that night and there wasn’t a need to break my water. At this point my epidural was wearing off because I was getting used to the fentanyl dose and I was starting to feel the pain. My blood pressure was 180/100 and something (my blood pressure wasn’t an issue while laboring) and I had a fever. I was told that I was going to have a c-section. By then I was so exhausted and in pain that I didn’t care I just wanted him out.
My son was born via c-section in about 2 minutes from the initial cut to him being out in the world. Let me tell you a c-section is a wild ride that we will talk about in another post. Was this how I envisioned my first childbirth – no, was this ideal – no, did I have a healthy baby – yes. That last part is all that mattered to me. That was my real birth plan was to have a healthy baby and for myself to be safe.