The Story of Baby Gavin

Diagnosis of Pre-Eclampsia

Our fourth IVF attempt was a surprising success, and we were expecting our son on February 20^th, 2014.  After living with my brother for a while, we moved into an apartment in Murray and got to work getting everything settled for our new arrival.  We found a new obstetrician and hospital nearby and I had my first appointment with Dr. Gravelle in mid-December when I was 30 weeks along.  She asked me how I was feeling and I said, “I feel awesome.  I don’t feel pregnant at all!”  It was true.  I was having a pretty easy pregnancy.  I felt like my normal self and thought it was great.

Boy did I ever pay for that comment.

Soon after that appointment, I had a few issues pop up.  I started seeing stars, the kind you see when you get up too fast and are about to pass out.  This would happen from time to time for no apparent reason.  I also started to feel a bit larger than before.  Well, duh, I’m pregnant.  But it wasn’t all baby and it wasn’t all fat either, though all the holiday treats weren’t helping.  Some of it was swelling too.

On Christmas Eve, my mom noticed my swollen ankles and feet.  Oh no!  She and my sister-in-law, Amber, talked about how swelling can be normal in pregnancy but it can also get pretty bad and be an indicator for other issues.  Amber specifically mentioned pre-eclampsia but I didn’t really worry about it.  This was probably nothing more than your normal pregnancy symptoms.

My swelling did get worse that day, to the point where I was aching.  That’s what I get for being on my feet all afternoon cooking our special Christmas Eve meal.  We cancelled our outing to Temple Square that night and instead spent the evening rubbing my feet, which did help.  My swelling continued to go up and down over the next few days.  I was hardly worried but figured I would bring it up at my next appointment.

On Friday, December 27^th, I went in for a gestational diabetes test and a regular checkup with Dr. Gravelle.  After drinking the lovely glucose juice, I had my appointment with the doctor.  They told me I had high blood pressure and protein in my urine too (not to mention a lot of weight gain)!  High blood pressure was definitely a new one for me!  I told the doctor about the stars and the swelling too.  She said I was retaining a lot of water.  She wanted to do more testing to make sure, but it was all sounding a lot like pre-eclampsia.

Pre-eclampsia is a strange condition.  No one really knows why women get it but we know the only cure is the delivery of the placenta.  For whatever reason, the placenta begins to have a negative impact on your body and the only way to stop it is to get it out, which obviously means the delivery of the baby.  Pre-eclampsia can lead to eclampsia, which causes seizures in the mother and can be fatal for her and the baby.  So it can be serious, but they take measures to monitor everything and make sure the mother doesn't get to that point.

I asked her what would happen if I did have pre-eclampsia.  She told me it all depended on how well I did.  If I had severe pre-eclampsia, they would deliver the baby right away.  But as long as it was mild and stayed that way, they would deliver the baby at 37 weeks, which is considered far enough along for baby to be good and healthy. 

I honestly had no worry whatsoever that things would get severe.  I couldn’t picture it happening, especially when I felt pretty good and knew the baby was fine.  I didn’t have any inkling it would happen and didn’t worry myself over it either.  My only real concern was the due date.  If he was delivered at 37 weeks, that would be the end of January!  Darn it, I really wanted a February baby!  And how was I supposed to prepare myself when I had all these maybes and what ifs!  Ugh!

So we did some more blood work for the pre-eclampsia and they wanted to collect my urine for 24 hours just to get a good reading on the protein levels.  I also did a non-stress test, where they strapped some monitors to my belly to track the baby’s heart rate.  Whenever he moved, his heart rate was supposed to go up to let us know the placenta is doing its job.

I was initially worried he wouldn’t move at all but instead he danced around so much that we kept losing his heart rate!  He kept moving out from underneath the doppler!  Once we finally pinned him down, the nurse said, “I need this baby to give me a baseline!”  We knew his heart rate was up with his movements because that’s all he was doing was moving around!  Calm down, buddy!  So what began as a twenty minute tests ran over an hour instead.  But he eventually calmed down, we got the baseline heart rate, and he passed with flying colors.

I felt fine.  The baby was fine.  I wasn’t worried in the slightest.

I called about my results on Monday, December 30^th, and the nurse said I did have mild pre-eclampsia and would need extra monitoring.  I would be coming in twice a week for more of those non-stress tests and to check my blood pressure.  I would also do labs and a doctor visit every Friday.  Sounded busy but I was actually excited to keep a closer eye on everything.  I love to monitor my baby!

They wanted me to come in that day and the next for two shots of betamethasone, a steroid that is supposed to help the baby develop a little more quickly and helps prevent pre-term labor.  I remember coming in on Tuesday, December 31^st, for my final shot.  It was so busy that they took nearly an hour just to get to me and do the shot.  Everyone was there having babies, trying to claim them on their 2013 taxes!  I was feeling glad I was not having the baby right then, right around the new year, which I know can be hard as a birthday.

That night, I was over at my brother’s house to celebrate New Year’s Eve with him and his family.  I started feeling kind of crappy as the night wore on.  I had had a really big dinner and quite a few snacks so I figured I’d just eaten too much.  I’d actually gotten a blood pressure monitor from a friend just a few hours before so I checked it and my blood pressure was pretty high.  So I decided to just lay back on the couch, take it easy, and wait for midnight.  As soon as midnight came and I muttered a weak “Happy New Year,” I found a bed and went right to sleep.

From Bad to Worse - Can't Breathe!

I heard some very strange sounds the next morning, January 1^st,, as I was lying in bed.  I thought it was a squeaky toy or little bubbles popping, almost like when you pour milk into your Rice Krispies.  I had no idea what those sounds were until later that night when I was desperately trying to get to sleep.  Those sounds were coming from me!  Whenever I exhaled, I heard that squeaky popping sound!  What was going on?

Throughout that day, New Years Day of 2014, it had become more and more difficult for me to breathe.  I figured the baby must have been really cramping me now that he was getting bigger.  There had been times when I’d felt him move pretty close to my ribs so I knew it was a possibility and a normal part of pregnancy to be short of breath. 

But as I tried to sleep that night, I felt was my labored breathing was a little over the top!  It was hard to breathe deeply.  I remember telling Nick I felt like I had an iron band tied around my chest, constricting my breathing.  And each breath felt like I just wasn’t getting enough oxygen, like I was trying to climb Mt. Everest!  So I was basically panting, which is not conducive to sleep, let me tell you!  When I would start to fall asleep, my breathing would slow down, which would make me feel even more deprived of oxygen, to the point that my chest would start hurting and it would wake me right back up!  It felt like I was drowning, with that pain in your chest you get when holding your breath underwater for too long!

It was a very rough night.  I looked up tips on getting better sleep with a baby cramping your lungs.  Nothing worked.  I got very suspicious that this was not just the baby.  I typed in my symptoms and it almost sounded like I had asthma!  Can you even develop that later in life?  Can you suddenly get that while pregnant?  I tried home remedies for asthma too but nothing worked.  I was getting frustrated and desperate, not only to be deprived of sleep but to have to work so hard to do something as basic (and non-stop) as breathing!

Nick woke up in the middle of the night hearing me pant next to him.  He was very concerned.  He got up and gave me a back rub.  It felt fantastic but, unfortunately, sleep never came.

After a night of no sleep, I had determined this was way too horrible to not be addressed.  I had an appointment with Dr. Gravelle the next day but could not wait that long if it meant another night of no sleep.  After anxiously watching the clock all morning, I called and talked to a nurse.  She told me to go ahead and check in at labor and delivery.  Then she called me right back and said she had talked to labor and delivery and they just wanted me to go to the emergency room.  I had no clue whether this breathing problem was related to the pregnancy or not so when they sent me over to the ER instead, I figured it must be a separate issue.  Either that or they were too busy to deal with me.

My Day at the Emergency Room

My mother-in-law, Angie, took me to the emergency room around 10am, Thursday, January 2^nd.  Luckily we found the place mostly empty and were able to get checked in quickly, though that was no hint of what the rest of my day would look like!  After changing into a lovely hospital gown and getting my own room, a doctor came in and listened to my breathing.  He said he didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary but that I could have a blood clot in my lungs.  Because that can be fatal, he said we should run some tests to rule that out.

They hooked me up to a bunch of monitors, put an IV in, and had someone come from labor and delivery to monitor the baby.  Sheesh, what an operation.  Then they did blood work which did show a possibility of a blood clot.  But the doctor said pregnancy nearly always complicates the readings for that test.  What does that mean?  More testing!  Lots more!

I had a chest x-ray done, a CT scan, and this horrid breathing test to monitor my oxygen intake.  While lying on this thin hard table, this technician put one of those oxygen masks over me.  I was excited to get the mask, thinking it would feel a whole lot nicer to get some supplemental oxygen!  Instead I felt like I’d had a pillow strapped to my face!  It was even harder to breath than before and I told the technician that.  But he assured me that air was coming through this little hole in the top just above my mouth, just a quarter-sized window to the room air I guess.  Gee, thanks!

To do the test, he asked me to take a deep breath and hold it for five seconds.  He counted the seconds but they were very slow seconds so it was more like ten or fifteen, not five.  It was hard enough for me to even take a deep breath, let alone hold it for that long when I was struggling to breathe so badly!  At his signal, I let my breath out and started gasping for air.  I had that pain in my chest from lack of air and was feeling a desperate need for oxygen!  But I felt like I wasn’t getting any air through that stupid mask and started to panic!  It felt like I was suffocating!

I cried out a little and tried reaching for the mask to rip it off but the technician held it onto my face!  Seriously, dude, this is scary!  But he assured me I was getting air!  That may be so, you dolt, but I feel like I’m dying here!  Really! 

Because my mouth was gaping open, desperate to draw in as much oxygen as possible, it was creating a little gap between the mask and my face.  I could feel some of the room air coming in through that little gap, giving me just enough oxygen to keep me going (meanwhile that stupid hole in the mask seemed more like a plug than an opening).  So I focused on that leak of air and tried to calm myself and slow my breathing.  Overall, it was a horrible experience and I now know how terrifying it would be to die from drowning or suffocating.

By this time, I had been at the emergency room for about five hours, with all the testing and all the wait time in between.  Angie had gone to work around noon and Nick had come to take her place and be with me.  Besides the suffocation test, I was really very calm throughout all of this, not at all suspecting that I had a blood clot in my lungs.  I was really hoping we would find some cause for my labored breathing, however.  If we found nothing wrong and pinned it all on the baby cramming me, I was afraid to face another month of sleepless nights panting in my bed with no remedy or relief!

So I was very relieved when they came in and told me I had no blood clot but that they did find fluid in my lungs!  Alright!  We have a reason for this craziness!  The doctor said my heart looked a little enlarged and they needed to figure out if the fluid in my lungs was from a heart under stress.  If I was having a heart issue then they would admit me to the hospital.  If not, they would deal with the fluid and send me home.

I remained unworried.  Honestly, the one and only thing that was on my mind was sleep.  Whether I got sleep at home or was admitted to the hospital and got some sleep there, I didn’t care.

I updated everyone on my status and asked my sister-in-law if they could be on standby to take my dog in case I needed to get admitted to the hospital.  Nick had already gone to take care of him since Marley had been in the crate all day long during all my testing.  Instead, my brother, Brett, was anxious to come down to the emergency room and be with me.  I thought it was a little too soon to be worrying but I couldn’t convince him otherwise.

In the meantime, they gave me this fantastic shot through my IV!  They told me it would clear the fluid from my lungs and I would pee it all out.  What?  We know how to do that with a shot?  Wow, high five to whoever figured that out!  I was pretty skeptical of this magical shot but man oh man did it ever work!  Over the next few hours, the floodgates opened.  I was visiting the bathroom every ten minutes and peeing the Nile into their toilets there!  I was started to get self-conscious that the nurses were laughing about this robed woman dancing through the halls to the bathroom again and again.  I’m sure it was comical to anyone who noticed. 

But the best part?  I could breathe again!  After about an hour, I started to notice it didn’t hurt so much to breathe and I felt a lot more satisfied with each breath.  I called my mom and she could tell things were getting better because I wasn’t panting through my sentences.  Wow, it really worked!

They did an ultrasound on my heart to see if they could find any issues there.  But everything looked just fine.  Since my heart checked out and I could breathe again, I was ready to go home and hit the hay!  I feel great guys!  Thanks!  See ya!  But no.  The doctor came in again to talk to me.  He told me that my heart checked out fine but he had called down to labor and delivery and they wanted to check me out over there.  Ugh, okay, more checking and testing.  Really, I feel fine!  Can I just go?

The doctor said there could be a connection between my pre-eclampsia and the fluid in my lungs, which they called pulmonary edema.  If there was a connection, he said they may deliver the baby now.  I thought that was laughable.  I hadn’t heard of labored breathing as a symptom of pre-eclampsia, and considering the fact that the baby and I were feeling fine, I didn’t see why this would turn into an emergency delivery.  And, by the way, if these were related then why on Earth did they send me to the emergency room in the first place!?

My Shocking Plunge into Labor

My brother and husband were there and they followed behind as they wheeled me through the hospital over to labor and delivery.  It was going on 7pm now and I had already been at the hospital for nine hours now!  I was hoping this would be a quick check and I could go home soon.

They took me into one of the labor rooms and I sat on the bed there.  Brett asked me if I was nervous and I said no.  I didn’t see any reason to get worked up over something that hadn’t happened yet and probably wouldn’t.

The on-call doctor came in, Dr. Brown, a lady I had heard wonderful things about.  I had hoped to have her as my obstetrician but she was already booked up.  She lived up to her reputation and was nothing but easy-going, fun, and compassionate.  She sat down on the bed next to me and said, “Well, the good news is that you don’t have a blood clot in your lungs.  The bad news is that you've now graduated to severe pre-eclampsia and we need to deliver this baby now.”

Excuse me?

Sometimes you hear something so outrageous that it takes a moment for the information to grind through all the gears in your head and get processed as a reality.  My first reaction was to somehow find a way to get out of this.  Can’t I go home, sleep, and come back to do this in the morning!?

Part of it was the timing.  No one wants to deliver a baby seven weeks early, of course, and I was still unhappy with the date itself.  It’s hard to have a birthday around the new year and this was way too close to that!  But I was mostly wanting to get out of it because of how tired I was.  After being up for 36 hours, I felt extremely exhausted and had a horrible headache.  I didn’t see how I could face a night of labor and a birthing too!  But the doctor said it with such finality, I knew I had no choice.  I knew they would never risk delaying delivery with severe pre-eclampsia.  I was stuck with this new reality.  I would be having this baby very early and would be exhausted doing it!

Once I accepted that (though I would be shaking my head in disbelief for days to come), I just tuned out all my other concerns and focused on preparing myself to have this baby.  I asked Brett to take our dog for me and asked Nick to run home and get a few things for our stay at the hospital.  Brett left a little emotional, crying and telling me he loved me, which was very sweet.

The doctor told me we’d have to do quite a few things to get my body ready for this baby to come.  Then she checked me and said, “Oh, change of plans, you’re already at a two and he’s head down!”  Okay then, I guess my body wants to be rid of this baby!  Or maybe the baby is done with my body?  Which one, I don’t know.

She came in a little bit later to break my water.  I was a little afraid of that long hook but it didn’t hurt at all.  It was a very bizarre experience though.  It was Niagara Falls all over again and we were all oohing and ahing at all the fluid.  I told the doctor and the nurse, “It feels like I’m throwing up out the wrong end!” and they laughed at that.  Thankfully the fluid looked normal and everything checked out.  Now there was no turning back.  I would be having this baby within the next 24 hours!

Before starting me on the Pitocin to induce labor, they needed to start magnesium sulfate treatments, which helps to prevent seizures.  This is a risk with pre-eclampsia so it needs to be addressed.  I’d heard nasty things about the magnesium and was worried I would face a night of nausea or dizziness.  To my great relief, my only reaction was feeling hot.  Poor Nick spent the night wrapped up in his coat and some blankets while I had the temperature turned down and a fan going, plus a cold wet washcloth on my head for the heat and the headache.

We had one other issue that needed addressing sooner than later.  With my already weak bladder and that shot still working its magic, I was needing a bathroom visit a little too often.  I probably went three times within an hour and the nurse was beginning to be exasperated.  With all my monitors and IVs, it was quite a process just to get across the room and go pee.  The nurse recommended we put a catheter in and I was all for it.  If I didn’t have to go to the bathroom then I could rest a whole lot easier, and rest was still my number one priority.

I had no idea what I was signing up for.  I had never had a catheter in and had no clue they actually shove the thing up your urethra!  Did you just cross your legs, clench up and squirm?  Because I did for days after whenever I revisited that experience!  Part of it was the pain, but part of it was just the shock of what she was actually doing!  I gasped and cried out and was mad at myself for okaying this horrible process.  The worst part was, I now felt extreme discomfort down there.  It felt like I had to pee really bad!  Wasn’t that the point was for me to get rid of that full-bladder feeling and now I was feeling it all the time!?  Wow, this thing is of the devil!

After all that was taken care of, they started me on the Pitocin sometime around 10 or 11pm.  After about a half hour, I started feeling some contractions.  It was painful, like a very bad menstrual cramp.  If that was all there was to it, I could have endured.  But I knew that the pain would get much much worse.  I had no desire to experience that and my exhaustion ruled out any possibility for me to take this on anyway.  What I needed more than anything was rest, not a display of bravery!  So I called the nurse and asked her to bring on that epidural!

Whoever invented the epidural also gets a high five from me.  That thing took away all my discomfort, including that horrid catheter and the restlessness and aching I felt from laying on a stupid hospital bed all day long.  All I felt was relaxation.  I might actually get some rest tonight after all!  The anesthesiologist was a bit of a goofy looking guy but he did an excellent job.  I told him, “No need to be too descriptive!”  A few weeks earlier, I had nearly passed out when learning how an epidural works.  He told me, “I will just tell you what you will feel, not what I am doing.”  It worked out fine, with a few unpleasant sensations along the way, but nothing as horrible as that catheter!

We finally got settled in around midnight and I was excited for the long-awaited possibility of sleep.  I did have a few obstacles though.  Of course, the nurse would come in and check on me from time to time, waking me up each time.  They also had a blood pressure monitor on my arm which was set to inflate and check on me every hour.  Thanks for that.  I was incredibly thirsty too, probably dehydrated from that magical shot leaking everything out of me, so I woke up binging on ice chips every so often to satisfy my dire thirst.  And I had that darn headache from lack of sleep.  I had my washcloth to provide some relief to my head but was really hoping some sleep would help get rid of it.

And I did sleep all throughout the night, which is really incredible.  I never thought I could sleep through labor!  The interruptions were frequent and I didn’t get the restful sleep I really needed.  It just felt like a series of light naps, over and over again.  By the time morning came, I was glad for the rest but not feeling much better overall.  I still felt that I had pulled two all-nighters in a row and was worried to have to deliver a baby in that condition!

The Delivery of Our Baby Boy

At around 6am, they checked me again and said I was at a 7.5 and that things would be moving along quickly now.  I had Nick text everyone and let them know I would probably be having this baby between 7am and 9am.  Sure enough, I was at a 10 when they checked me 7am.  They wanted to wait just a bit longer for his head to descend more and also for Dr. Gravelle to come in and deliver the baby.

During the final waiting period, my exhaustion peaked and I finally fell into a deeper sleep.  This felt wonderful except that it was cut very short once I was wheeled into the delivery room and was needing to prepare for delivery.  By this point, I was so incredibly exhausted that my eyelids would simply not stay open.  It was awful.  Here I was at this epic, long-awaited, hard-earned moment, and I felt like I’d swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills!  I was prying my eyelids open with my hands, slapping my face, and doing whatever I could to be present, even though I had an overwhelming desire to just lie back and let sleep overtake me.

Of course, once I was required to start pushing then I woke up, barely.  Nick was there by my side, holding up my leg, and I had a nurse on the other side with the other leg.  My doctor, who I’d only met twice at that point, was there to deliver the baby.  I was concerned that the epidural would make it hard for me to push, but it had worn off just enough for me to feel the contractions and to feel enough down there to focus my efforts on pushing the baby out, without having to guess whether I was being effective or not.  I was really very happy for that, to feel enough to be effective and more involved but not enough for it to be unbearably painful.  That and the fact that I could deliver this baby vaginally are two of the greatest blessings of my sudden delivery.

They told me to push for ten seconds whenever I had a contraction.  Pushing the baby out was actually not too difficult, though the small baby and the pain medications made everything much easier, I’m sure.  He even started out facing the wrong way but my first few pushes turned him the right direction, face up.  Bam, I am that good!  My only difficulty in pushing was that my face felt more pressure than was comfortable.  They told me to hold my breath when pushing (not a huge fan of holding my breath after the suffocation test), but it seemed like that made my face red and hot like I was going to pop a vein in the process.  Still not sure if I was doing something wrong there but I’m happy to report that all my veins are still intact (I think).  The doctor was impressed with my progress with each push and that’s what mattered most.

The doctor was busy working to massage everything and stretch me out so the head could make its way out.  But she said I was very tight and would probably tear.  She was concerned I would tear upward into my urethra, which would have been very painful and hard to repair.  So she made a very small incision downward to allow me to tear in the right direction.  I was concerned I would feel her do the deed, but I was blessed once again to have the pain relief working.  I felt nothing.

Nick was really enjoying the whole process.  I asked how he was doing and he said he was doing great and that this was a beautiful thing.  He was anxious for me to watch it too.  I thought I would give it a go, though I wasn’t too keen on the mirror thing.  They wheeled out the mirror and I got a good look at the whole birthing process.  After that first look, I told them I was about done with that.  Yes, it was very cool, if it wasn’t me, right now.  In retrospect, I actually wish I had stuck with it.  I think it would have been neat to see him come all the way out.

I was awake for the pushing, of course, but I would lie back in between contractions and nearly fall asleep each time.  I was still very groggy and drained, and still parched too.  Nick had those very-unsatisfying ice chips nearby and I would have him feed me some in between contractions.  I couldn’t wait to fall asleep when this was done and get a nice tall glass of water too, not necessarily in that order but I’ll take whatever comes first!

At 8:39am, the baby was born.  Of course, I cried.  The greatest emotion I had was actually a sense of loss.  I had no idea that I had developed such a strong bond with this baby while he was a part of me.  I felt that separation once he left me and it was kind of sad, like I’d just lost my privilege to be a part of this sacred process of life and this miraculous little being.  I also cried from relief that the hard part was over, and also from the magic of the whole birthing experience itself.

Much to my relief, everyone had a great reaction when he came out.  At 33 weeks, I had no idea how he would look or how we would do.  I also had that worry that he may not be perfectly healthy and may have Downs Syndrome or some other issue.  I had tried to prepare myself for that in case it happened, mentally and emotionally.  So I was happy to hear when everyone said he looked really good, had great skin tone, and even gave out a little cry, all very good signs. 

I sat up to see my baby but they whisked him away to the NICU and all I saw was a foot!  I was very disappointed in that.  I knew they would take him quickly to the NICU but had been told the doctor would hold him up for us to see.  But Nick was able to see him and said he was beautiful and the nurses and doctor agreed.  At least I had that assurance that he was looking great.

After they took him away, we had this little bit of time to rest and admire our baby.  They gave me a cold cup of apple juice, which I downed, then brought in a picture of him just a few minutes after he was born.  I was so happy with what I saw.  He really did look amazing for being so young and for having just been born!  I didn't have any expectations, really, but I was not anticipating him to look so great.

Complications, Pain, and Blood Loss

My rest time was over quickly.  Without saying a word, the doctor suddenly began pressing firmly all over my abdomen, which felt very painful.  I knew what she was doing.  We still needed the placenta to come out.  She also started reaching up inside of me.  I don’t know what she was doing exactly, but I know it added quite a bit to the pain.  It hurt so badly, I laid back and gasped and cried out, just hoping this would be over soon so the pain would end.  Why was this taking so long?  Doesn’t the placenta just come on out after the baby?

This went on for quite some time.  I lost all awareness of anything else but the pain and how it went on and on.  After ten or fifteen minutes, the doctor told me that the placenta would not detach and they would need to go in and get it out.  My mother had had a similar complication after I was born where her placenta had come out in pieces and the doctor had had to do a manual sweep on the inside of her uterus to make sure there was nothing left inside!  Yes, he reached his fist up through her cervix and felt around in there.  To this day, she gets faint just mentioning it and describes it as the worst experience of her life, worse than child birth.  Knowing how horrible it felt for my mom, it was the LAST thing I ever wanted to hear.  And there I was, hearing that very thing!  My main reaction was, “Well, go figure.”  Frankly, I thought she had already been all the way up just because of the pain I felt and how far she was searching around in there.  To think she would be going deeper was beyond what I could comprehend.

I was already spent before any of this craziness began and this new development took me to the final level of exhaustion.  Though I still cried out in pain, I was beginning to fade.  I remember hearing them say, “Should we give her something for the pain?”  What!?  Hello!  If I could have had some drugs, why did we not do this ten minutes ago!?  The goofy looking anesthesiologist came in and told me he was going to give me something fast acting.  Nick said he gave me a shot and that I calmed down within thirty seconds, thank goodness.  Once I was rid of the pain, I phased out.  Bye, everyone!  Sorry to birth and run, but I’m done with all this!

Who knows how long I was out and I still am in awe that I could even sleep through something like that.  Turns out I was losing a heck of a whole lot of blood, however, so perhaps I was blacking out too, not just sleeping.  The placenta had finally detached but there were pieces left inside that were hemorrhaging, still connected to my body and getting a blood flow.  So I was basically bleeding internally from these stubborn placenta pieces.  Nick said it was amazing how much blood I lost while all this was going on.  I guess it was quite a scene.

Needless to say, there was a team of people around me at that point, all working to get this out and keep me stabilized.  I came out of my stupor for a moment and felt my heart pounding.  “I feel like my heart is beating really fast,” I said.  “That’s because it is,” one nurse told me.  Seeing all these people around me and feeling my heart racing, I suddenly felt very sick.  I shamelessly threw up all that wonderful apple juice.  Nick laughs about how unabashedly I vomited all over everything but I was too dazed and too concerned about this placenta crisis to care about making a mess.  And I knew it would just be apple juice anyway.  Not like I was throwing back some Mexican food or something.  He said they were completely unfazed by it, threw some rags on the floor, and just continued on in their work.

I wish Nick had been nearby.  I was concerned that he was worried for me and I couldn’t see him past all the nurses by my bed.  I asked for him and then could see him sitting in the corner watching this blood bath.  There was no room for him by the bed with all the nurses around me.  There was a little room by my head though so I imagined him holding my head or touching my face and how comforting that would be.  But I knew he wouldn’t come and be in the way of everyone.  So I laid back and faded out again.

This went on for a good thirty minutes.  They transferred me to another bed and I remember feeling incredibly weak as they picked me up and scooted me over, like I had no strength in any of my limbs.  They wheeled me back into the labor room but I have no memory of that.  I was already gone.

Meeting my Baby and Recovering

Though I probably could have slept all day and all night after that, I was awake enough to hear a quick conversation shortly after arriving back at the labor room.  I heard them ask Nick if he wanted to go and see the baby in the NICU and he said yes.  Though I lay there half asleep, I wanted to cry out and demand that he wait for me.  I was jealous he could go and see him first and that he’d see the baby without me.  Seeing as I was pretty incapacitated, however, I didn’t see how fair it would be for him to wait for me.  Besides, he had already seen the baby be born so he had kind of already crossed that bridge.  And I was too weak to protest even if I wanted to! 

Nick later told me that he was anxious to see the baby but also didn’t like the thought of him spending his first few hours of life all alone.  I agree and would have done the same thing, though we were both picturing him alone inside of an incubator and were surprised to find he was not!  Hooray!

I woke up at about 11:00am, after resting for just 90 minutes.  Nick was there looking at his phone with tears streaming down his face.  He told me he was looking at pictures of the baby and just coming to realize the relationship there, that this was his son and he was the daddy.  It was really sweet and I felt so happy for him, for this moment he’d been anxious for all the way back when we were dating 10 years ago!

Nick had been in charge of keeping everyone informed and I was wondering what he had relayed about the pregnancy and the craziness with the placenta.  He said he had just told everyone there had been slight complications but we were all okay.  Good man.  I wanted people to know, but not enough for anyone to worry too much.

He then told me that my parents were on their way!  What!?  I was shocked and felt really happy and flattered.  With this whole thing being a complete surprise, I had no expectation for my parents to come.  But now they were both coming and coming right now!  How cool!  Soon after he told me, my dad walked in with my brother, Brett.  Wow!  This is neat!  Though I desperately wanted to go back to sleep, I was happy for the visitors, to feel the support and share in the excitement of everything.

The nurses came in shortly after they arrived and said it was time to move me to recovery.  On the way, we would stop by the NICU and I would get to see the baby!

They wheeled me in, bed and all, and I got my first look at this beautiful baby boy.  I don’t remember all the emotions I had at that moment, only that I was very emotional.  I think I felt a lot of relief and gratitude that he was finally here, he looked very healthy, and everything had turned out okay.  I also felt love and awe for this little being who had been inside of me just hours before.  How amazing.  There was a lot of crying.  He was getting help breathing so he had his face covered with the CPAP machine and I was only really able to admire his limbs.  I rubbed his feet and his legs and his hands and just appreciated how great he looked.

Later on, Nick told me how meaningful of a moment this was.  He was there with me last March (2013), when we had gone in to the fertility doctor and been told we were having our third miscarriage.  I had felt hopeful that the pregnancy would work out, though it was already on the rocks.  But we did an ultrasound and I could see that things were not looking right.  The doctor told me the news and that’s when things broke inside of me.  That’s when I’d been asked to take on more than I could bear.  My heart broke, my spirit broke, my faith broke, and the last shreds of hope I’d been clinging to were completely destroyed.  Nick saw this all happen on my stone cold face as I sat in that room at the fertility center, a room that had come to mean nothing but pain and heartbreak for me.  I was beaten.

Ten months later, Nick would see a different face.  Here I was seeing my baby for the first time, something I had not dared to ever hope in again.  He said it meant so much to see my face then, to see me have happiness and joy instead of pain and devastation.  This was a big step toward something brighter for the both of us, toward healing in our hearts and spirits.

Recovery was an interesting experience, fun and exhausting and a little challenging.  I had a stream of visitors over the next few days, including my mom and dad and my brother and sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, and a few cousins.  While I was stuck in bed trying to recover, Nick had the job of escorting everyone to see baby Gavin, a job he did not mind at all.  He loved to watch him, take pictures, and just admire.  So did everyone else.  I was glad I had a picture of him to put by my bed since I was missing out on all the fun.  I would look at it often and feel love and pride and happiness.  What a gem.

Besides seeing the baby again, what I wanted more than anything was just to rest!  But with all the visitors during the day and the nurses checking in all night long, rest consisted of short naps here and there and never any restful sleep, a little torturous after the lack of sleep I’d already had the past few nights.  I suppose that’s what a baby does to you anyway so we might as well start now!  At night, I put a cold washcloth over my eyelids because my eyes (and my whole head) felt so burnt out from everything.  That helped to soothe them a little.

Luckily I had great nurses who took really good care of me.  I found that I was experiencing very little pain, surprisingly, though I’m sure the drugs were helping.  They still had me hooked up to the magnesium treatments to avoid any post-delivery seizures and I also had these bands massaging my legs the whole time, supposedly to avoid blood clots.  I was still very swollen too, in my hands and arms, my face and chest, and my ankles and feet!  What a hottie!  You can just call me Bloatie.  Sitting or standing would cause my ankles and feet to swell up any more and they would ache badly.  I was thrilled to get all this excess fluid out of me in the days following.  It’s almost like my body was retaining so much water, it had nowhere else to go but into my lungs, which is what started my sudden delivery!  Who knows?

Really, the biggest issue was the blood loss, which I felt any time I attempted to get up.  Just sitting up in bed made me feel woozy.  The nurses tried to help me to the bathroom once and I nearly fainted when I stood up, even with them both supporting me.  My vision was going and my hearing was too, so we aborted that mission and I got right back on the bed.  We tried again a little bit later and although I made it to the bathroom this time, I was still shaken by the whole experience of walking a whopping five steps to the toilet!  I had to hold on to the bar on the wall while sitting on the toilet, just to steady myself and not pass out.  I felt so weak, as if I were a 90 year old woman.  Clearly I’d had some serious blood loss.

Because of all that, I was not able to see the baby again for quite a while, since I couldn’t even get myself into a wheelchair.  Saturday morning they decided to do a blood transfusion and I was all for it so that I could heal up and see my baby again.  Once that was done, I began to feel more able.  Finally I could go and see Gavin again and hold him for the first time!

The nurse handed him over to me and cuddled his tiny body to my bare chest.  I was overwhelmed with emotion and began sobbing.  Finally, after so much work, so many trials, so many losses, so many doctor visits and prayers and perseverance, I was a mother.  This tiny little being was mine to have, to hold, to care for and raise up.  I felt an overwhelming desire to love and protect this little person, to let him know that he was safe with me and that all I wanted was for him to be happy.  I stroked his back and his fuzzy little head.  I felt like I was holding a bunny because of how small and soft he was!  Oh how I loved this precious little boy, this gift and miracle we had!  My cup runneth over.

It was a wonderful visit.  You can only have four people in the room at a time, so all my visitors came in at different times to see me with the baby.  My parents were there first, then the grandmas, then my brother and sister-in-law.  Everyone was in tears from all the emotion of the moment.

I was discharged Sunday evening, after four days of tests, labor, delivery, visitors, and extreme shock, emotion, and exhaustion.  That night, I rubbed my belly and missed his presence there.  At the same time, Nick turned to me and said, “I miss him.”  We held each other and cried, partly because of the difficulty in leaving him behind but mostly because we felt so overwhelmingly blessed and in awe of all that had happened.  We now had a son, a healthy and adorable baby boy. 

As we held each other, Nick said, “I never thought I could love anyone as much as I love you.”  It was one of the sweetest moments of my life.