This is Chance's story. She was born at 30 weeks. Dealing with Preclampsia, High Blood Pressure and Gestational Diabetes I was put in the hospital on Sept 19th because they were scared I would go into labor and being that I was 29 weeks along at the time, they didn't want me going into labor at home. So, they admitted me.
Not a lot happened in the first week. They did the best they could to drop my blood pressure as low as possible and finally after playing with medicine, they were able to get it under control. The Toxemia however, once it starts, there is no way to stop it. For those who don't know Toxemia is a condition that women can get with pregnancy that unfortunately, once you get it, the only way to stop it is to deliver the baby because the Toxemia comes from the placenta, and of course, you have to have the placenta in order to have the baby in the first place. There inlies the issue.
Let me actually start at the beginning of this whole story. My husband and I decided back in October of last year that after going on 8 years of marriage, we were finally ready for children. Okay I say we, but I was finally ready. My husband has been ready for kids since we got married. I had my own issues and was scared stupid about having a kid. So we tried. And we tried, and we tried. And every month, I would wind up not being pregnant.
February of this year rolls around and I know that I'm due to start my period, and there is none. I get excited, I take the pregnancy test, nothing. I'm once more brokenhearted at the fact that the pregnancy test has come back "Not Pregnant". So we wait. And we wait some more. Now comes the beginning of March. Still no period. Still the pregnancy test comes back "Not Pregnant", still I am confused. So we get into the end of the second week of March. My husband suggests we get one more pregnancy test. I stop at Wal-Greens on my way home from work on Saturday March 21st. My husband is at work so I call him as I take the test. I can't wait until he gets home. I'm too nervous.
So I do the little thing and I wait. It says that it could take up to 3 minutes for results to show up and with the last 2 tests, it had taken a while. So I stare at the test. My husband waits in silence on the phone and after about 45 seconds I see "Pregnant". And I stare at it for the longest moment waiting for the word "Not" to come up in front of the "Pregnant". My husband brings me back to reality asking me what the test says. I am speechless. I tell him he's going to be a daddy. All of a sudden I'm scared stupid. I'm actually pregnant. I'm going to be a mom. Holy crap! So, it's Saturday. I call my doctor and I tell them that I want a professional test and they tell me to come on in.
Then I call my daddy. Now he lives in a different state and he was with my grandma who was in the hospital at the time. In the hospital room with my mom and my aunt he answers the phone. I tell him..."Daddy, I'm pregnant." and I'm crying. So I reassure him that the tears are happy tears and he says "Well I would hope so." So I calm myself, and I say to him "Congratulations Grandpa." and he cries. So everyone else in the hospital room is now askin my dad why he's crying. So he says "Hello Grandma". So my grandma says "Oh, hi sweetie!" and my dad says, "No mom, actually I wasn't talking to you." Then my mama realizes he's talking to her, then it clicks for her that he said Grandma. The whole room was crying and saying congratulations and everything else.
The next step is the doctor. Now my sister went to an OB/GYN that was absolutely wonderful and delivered all 3 of her children. I was there when all 3 were born, I like this guy and further more, I trust him. So my husband and I talk about it and we go to him. So I go in for my first appointment with him on that following Wednesday and he decides that since my last period would suggest that I was 6-8 weeks along he would do a quick ultrasound and make sure everything looked okay. He does the ultrasound and he doesn't see anything. My heart falls out of my chest. He tells me, it could be that I'm too early, or it could be tubal that they needed to do more blood tests in a couple of days, see if the hormone levels are increasing, do another ultrasound and see what they could tell. Now, me being me and my timing with everything, he's going on vacation and the testing to be done on Friday would have to be done by one of his associates. Whatever. I didn't care at that point, I just wanted to know, was I still prego, was I not, where it was, so on and so forth.
So Friday rolls around and they pull the blood. Sure enough, my hormone levels are going up, the levels are still conducive to the thought that I'm 6-8 weeks along, so they do an ultrasound. I go to the imaging place, they do 2 ultrasounds, I'm there for half the afternoon and they find something. They find what looks like a possible cyst on my ovary, that if the baby is 6-8 weeks along, its about that size. So they rush me in that moment for an emergency laproscopy to now remove the baby which is not where it's supposed to be.
Well, they run me in, they do the laproscopy to remove the embryo, I wake up about an hour later and find, guess what...there's no baby. They cyst on my ovary was just a cyst on my ovary and they can't find the baby in the tubes. Now by this point they know that I haven't miscarried, and they know that it's not in the ovaries or tubes. So I'm still pregnant. Turns out after everything was all said and done, even with the hormone levels being as high as they were in my blood and missing my period, I had missed my period as an absolute fluke, that had nothing to do with me being pregnant (Hence the negative pregnancy tests), my hormone levels just happened to be really high, and I was only 3 weeks along. Not 6-8 weeks as originally thought. And the reason why the ultrasound couldn't find her was because well obviously, she's just a few cells that have divided. So we wait.
The rest of it went as normal as a regular pregnancy could go. Visits were good, ultrasounds went good, she of course had her legs closed in the initial big ultrasound so we weren't for sure she was a girl, but I knew. I'd been sure of it from the first week that she was a little girl. Well I'd had my thoughts, but I'd had my doubts. My daddy on the other hand was positive that she was a girl. You couldn't tell him one way from Adam that it was a boy, he wasn't havin any of it! LoL! And I had my issues with my pregnancy. My hips were misplaced so we already knew there was a good chance that I was going to have to have a c-section already. Then my uterus was tilted and the placenta was toward the back part of the uterus anyway so it took me forever to be able to feel her moving. Then came the third tri-mester. Time to come off of all my medicines that I'm taking that can affect my daughter. That was fun! That's when I started having issues with my blood pressure and when they started worrying about me having Toxemia and everything else. It had gotten to the point that I was out of work, at home and laying on my left side half the time.
Then we come back to the beginning of the blog. In the hospital. By Monday, my doctor comes into the room and first thing he does is says "Dang, I can't go anywhere and you end up in the hosptial." and of course I laugh. He tells me that whats happened is I've become Toxic and I'm going to be in the hospital until my daughter is born. And it's probably going to be within the next 2-3 weeks and it will be C-section. So I set in for the week. And I know it's going to be a long couple of weeks ahead of me. Or so I think.
Thursday morning I have an issue with a pain that hits my right side at about 4:30 in the morning. I wake my husband up and he hits the nurse button. They rush in and I can't explain why my side hurts. They check my blood pressure and its high and is on the rise. They assess it and the type of pain it is seems to be like a gas bubble that has hit so they have me get up and walk down the hallway and back. So my husband helps me out and after that it's a pretty big blur to be honest for the next few hours. My blood pressure got really high and my heart rate got really low. They almost took my daughter that morning. It was pretty scary. They finally got me stable and were able to stop anything from happening. Now up until this point they have on Tuesday and Wednesday given me steroids to help with the growth of my daughters lungs and kidneys because they are going to have to take her early.
So Friday morning comes. They run my blood pressure and they do an ultrasound and they find while doing the ultrasound that when my blood would pump it would flow, but there was no forward flow to the baby when it would stop pumping. They run in the room at around 10:30 and start setting me up, I'm going to have a baby. They're doing a C-Section at 2. Suddenly I realize holy crap, my daughter is coming! Now mind you, one thing that crosses my mind but I don't really think about, it's my mom's birthday. Happy birthday grandma!
They roll me into the OR for my c-section. They get me ready and they start with the spinal so they can numb me for the whole thing. The spinal hurt so bad. They have a very small area to work with and to be honest, I'm still having issues with my leg and the muscle where they hit something in my spine, though they are positive it will go away as swelling does. They scrub my husband up, get him ready and then they proceed with the surgery once I'm numb. I don't feel much of anything at all. I can feel little pressures, but really, that's all I feel. My husband feels the entire table shake and tells me he's going to look over the little blue cloth to see what they're doing. I tell him not to pass out on me. His story on what happened will be a later blog, but before it was all said and done, they were done and they were showing me the sweetest face I have ever seen in my life. There my daughter was in front of me. My little girl.
I instantly felt possessive and more love than I have ever known in my life. I hear all kinds of commotion going on beside me and the doctor tells me that they are getting her breathing going good because she is pre-term and she needs to breathe. I don't remember much of the next few hours, I just know that it's late Friday night that I'm able to go see my daughter. And I cry. She's so beautiful, so tiny. I have so many emotions. I feel so bad that she's in there, so loved that she's there, so scared that she's in there.
As I see her day by day it's getting a little easier as she is doing better. She was 2lb 5oz when she was born. She lost weight the first couple of days which they said was normal but she's gaining it back slowly. She's off of the oxygen already and it's been 6 days. I can't begin to tell the emotions I'm feeling right now. I hate that I had to leave her there. She is in one of the best Neonatal ICU's in the state and I know she's in good hands. I could not imagine her being home right now at 2lb 3oz, but it doesn't change the fact that I want her home with me right now. Not in a hospital miles away.
Other than that I'm doing okay. I can call and check on her, and I can even go up and see her every day. And I'm able to actally produce milk that I can take up to her which they said is good for her and is putting on her weight. She is amazing the doctors that she's able to breathe without help so far and she has her good days and her bad days. She's a bit jondis today and they are going to have to put the lamp on her today, but they also said they were going to remove the IV line that they have in her belly button and put an IV line in her foot or hand, which is a good thing, and means progress. They also moved her to a different part of he NICU yesterday which is what they do when the babies get stable. I'm so proud of my little girl. She's getting bigger by the day and doing better and better. It's going to be probably the end of November before they are able to let her come home (Unless they do what my father in law keeps suggesting and put gravy in with the breast milk. LoL!), but we are hoping for a quicker recovery. Well, this blog is her story. I will keep it updated as much a possible for my followers. Hopefully she will be home before anyone knows it. That's my hope and prayer. We are definitely open to prayers from anyone who wants to put in a word for my little girl. Love and peace to all.
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