Once we got moved back to Labor and Delivery, I got hooked back up to the baby monitor and had a catheter put in. My IV was not going to be big enough for all the drugs they needed to give me, so they called in the house specialist to try and get a new site. I was so swollen that she could not get any of the veins that she tried. So, they called in an anesthesiologist and assured me he is the best and always gets it his first try. Well... he tried in two locations and was also unable to get one in. Next thing I know, they are calling Transfusion Services to send someone up to put a midline in. I had no idea what this meant... until they sent someone up with an ultrasound machine who draped my arm and sterilized it then told me they would be using the ultrasound to find a deeper vein and thread a very long line into my vein. I had to have a local shot first before the actual line was placed because it was going to be so deep. As soon as the midline was in, they started the Magnesium Sulfate up again.
Once again I was restricted to ice chips, and I spent the rest of the day in bed contemplating the situation. The doctor told me that they would try to deliver me vaginally first but that they were going to put an epidural in just in case they had to do a c-section. They gave me Pitocin to induce labor and a nurse checked me and told me my cervix was soft and she could fit one finger through it. She said that my body was probably preparing to deliver. This made me feel a little less scared because I was now expecting to be able to deliver the baby vaginally. The anesthesiologist came in and put in the epidural, and we both thought things were going pretty well and that we would be waiting all night for me to dilate now so we sent our families home and tried to settle in for a long night.
About 2 hours later, a nurse came in and said "Looks like we need to take you for a c-section right now." What??? This came out of nowhere. I started crying and told her the doctor said I could try vaginally first. She told me that the baby's heart beat did not look active enough since they restarted the Magnesium and so a c-section would be safest for him. I was totally not expecting going into surgery and at this point I just felt hopeless. I felt like I had no say in what was going to happen anymore. I couldn't stop them from taking me into surgery...and I couldn't stop them from taking my baby. There was nothing that I could do to convince them that I was fine and that he didn't need to come out yet. I hate to admit it, but what I felt at that moment was that they were going to take my baby out of me, he is too little and underdeveloped to survive, and he is not going to make it.
They wheeled my bed into the operating room and Mike put on his scrubs and stood by my head. They put some medicine into my epidural and kept asking me to wiggle my toes. I remember Dr. Lister asking me if I could feel that, and I said "No, but I can still wiggle my toes" and Mike informed me that they were already cutting me open....Thanks Mike, that's reassuring. The surgery was kind of a blur for me. Apparently when she cut my skin open, I was so swollen that water squirted straight up all over her mask and even got on Mike. The doctor said she had never seen that happen before. The next thing I knew they were saying look at your baby, and I was looking at Mike asking where the baby was. He pointed to the right and I looked over in time to see the tiniest baby I'd ever seen, pink all over, with a head covered in dark hair... and he wasn't crying or moving at all.
They rushed him out of the OR and into an adjacent room that I could slightly see into through a window. Mike went with the neonatologist and they worked to resuscitate him and get him breathing. Our NICU admit papers say that it took them 8 minutes to get him intubated and breathing. The doctor started sewing me up in the meantime. Mike came back after a bit and showed me some pictures that he took on his phone and asked if I would be ok if he went with the baby down to the NICU. I asked him if the baby was breathing and how much he weighed, and he said they got him intubated and breathing and that he weighed 1 lb 7 oz. Then I told him I would be ok and to go. Our little baby was born on January 18th at 8:08 pm weighing 1 lb 7 oz and 12 1/2 inches long.
After they sewed me up, they wheeled me into a recovery room where our families were already waiting. I felt absolutely terrible. I was totally out of it from the epidural and Magnesium and could hardly keep my eyes focused or open. And all I could think about was that they just took my baby out of me, and he is too small. I didn't have any words to say. I couldn't even cry anymore because the drugs had me so out of it. Mike came back after a while and showed some pictures to the family. The neonatologist, Dr. Sheffield, came in and talked to us for a while. I don't really remember what he said because I was having such a hard time focusing. The one thing that I remember him saying was that we could expect our baby to be in the NICU at least until his due date...May 2nd.
After a few hours, they moved me back to the same post-partum room that I had spent my bed rest stay in--Rm 4111. On the way they wheeled my bed into the NICU and parked me next to my baby's isolette. All I could see was a tiny body with a protruding skeleton and a giant hat covering his head. Again, I don't remember a lot of it. The nurses in post-partum were still going to have to keep a close eye on me because preeclampsia can start back up again post-partum and will most likely happen within the first few days, but can happen anytime within 6-8 weeks post-partum. They told me that I would not be able to go back down to the NICU to see my baby until I was off the Magnesium the next day. Mike took down each of our parents to see the baby and get their names on our visitors' list-- we can only have a total of 6 people that can visit the baby during flu and cold season including ourselves. In the meantime, I was asleep off and on as medical personnel came and left from my room. That first night my blood pressure stayed relatively low and I was able to get some much needed rest that had evaded me the entire previous week and a half.
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