The Unexpected

On Friday, April 19, I went in for a non-stress test. I’d been going in for those tests twice weekly for the previous few weeks, and they’d all been textbook up until this point. 

And this test was also textbook… until the very end. The nurse took my blood pressure, and it was a little high. She waited a couple of minutes and took it again – still high. After conferring with the doctor, the nurse said they were sending me to the hospital where they’d monitor me and either send me home (if my blood pressure went down), or I’d be induced early. 

The nurse told me I could drive myself, but I should request a wheelchair up to the maternity ward on the third floor of the hospital. They called ahead to let them know I was on my way. 

This was certainly alarming, but I stayed pretty calm. I figured that’d be my best chance for lowering my blood pressure. I called Nick and told him the news, and when he asked if he should meet me at the hospital, I took the positive outlook. I told him to go ahead and stay at work since they were going to monitor me for a while. If the decision was made Rowan needed to be born, I’d let him know. 

I then called my mom and mother-in-law to give them the update. I also asked Mom to call Emilee. While I was driving to the hospital, Em called me and asked if Nick was meeting me at the hospital. I told her what I’d told him, and she said he should be there. 

“Can I call him and tell him to get to the hospital?” she asked. “Sure, go ahead,” I told her. 

During this conversation, I nearly missed my exit to get to the hospital – maybe I wasn’t as calm as I initially thought.

Turns out, around the same time I was talking to Em, Nick’s coworkers were telling him he should get to the hospital, so he left work and met me there. It’s a really good thing he did.

When I arrived, they took my blood pressure, and it was still pretty high; higher than it had been at the non-stress test. While waiting to take a second reading, Nick arrived. After they took it again and it was still high, the doctor told us I had severe pre-eclampsia. We’d be having our baby soon…

It’s strange – the whole pregnancy, you’re expecting a baby. But when a doctor tells you you’re having that baby two weeks before you really expected (we had scheduled an induction on May 5), it’s really jarring and scary. 

We were absolutely not prepared for this. We had lots of plans to get prepared that very weekend. 

I was going to pack our hospital bag so it was ready, just in case. We were going to take a baby safe class and a breastfeeding class. I was going to organize our nursery and put all the gifts away (they were all currently stacked haphazardly in the nursery), and we were going to have a maternity photo shoot.

We didn’t get a chance to do any of that. 

Nick was able to go home and get our hospital bag packed that afternoon, so we were at least able to check that off the list. We were lucky we’d have lots of help in the next couple of weeks. I’ll talk more about that in an upcoming blog. 

Once it was determined I was going to be induced that day, the nurses and doctor walked me through the process. They’d start me with a drug called Misoprostol. (For those who pay attention to the news, you may recognize that as one of the pills used for medicinal abortions. What you might not know, though, is that, in a much lower dose, it’s also used to induce labor.) I’d take it every couple of hours, and they’d continue checking my progress. 

Depending on the success or not of the drug would determine next steps. If my cervix was ripe and starting to dilate, they’d go ahead and break my water. If it wasn’t, there was a cervix-ripening drug they could try, and there was also a balloon they could use. 

Once my cervix was dilated enough, they would then break my water and start me on pitocin to induce contractions. 

But before all that could happen, I had to have an IV started so they could start administering magnesium. Because of the pre-eclampsia, I was in danger of having seizures. The magnesium helps prevent that, but it also meant I’d be bed bound–the entire time. 

I didn’t bother making a birth plan because I knew it likely wouldn’t go to plan, but the one thing I didn’t want to happen was to be bed bound. Of course the one thing I didn’t want to happen was the one thing that did happen. Guess it’s a good thing I didn’t bother with an entire plan…

The nurses also put in a second IV line in the event they’d have to administer insulin during the process. 

After the IVs were in place, I had to have a catheter inserted. Since I’d be bed bound, there would be no trips to the restroom for me. The catheter going in definitely wasn’t pleasant, but that was just the start of the unpleasantness to come. 

It made me think of something my sister had told me a couple weeks prior. She’d said, “Your birth story will be… something. No matter how smoothly it goes or not, labor is always… something.”

And she wasn’t kidding. I’ll delve more into my “something” in the next blog.