A Life In Review

3 Stars – Not as easy as shown on TV. Pretty exhausting time, lots of sickness, emotions and preparation (for the baby) involved. One month feels like five during the first pregnancy. You are full of worry, worry that the baby won’t make it, and worry that if they do make it, you’ll somehow screw them up. Body parts change, and things leak. However, there’s also this overwhelming excitement. Each little kick brings an inexplicable feeling of comfort and joy. Also, the end result makes it all worth it (in most cases).

Pregnancy is hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise, has never been pregnant themselves. For me getting pregnant wasn’t hard though. I have various medical issues that were supposed to make it difficult. We knew that we wanted to start a family right away, so I went in for a “pre-conception consultation” before we got married to make sure everything was in working order. It took us only four months to get pregnant. I was thrilled and so extremely thankful.

My pregnancy started out pretty normal. One day I was just feeling so weird. Bryan (my husband) kept telling me that I was pregnant but I didn’t believe him because I had been told that I would need medical assistance to get pregnant. He went off to work (he worked third shift for the first year of our marriage and my entire pregnancy), and around 9 PM I decided to take a pregnancy test. It was positive. So I took a cheap one next and it was negative. I couldn’t leave it at that, so I drove to the store and picked up two different kinds of pregnancy tests (Clear Blue & First Response in case you were curious). When I got home I took 3 more tests. All THREE were positive. I didn’t tell Bryan that night though. I set up a display for him to come home to. See picture:

It was a whirlwind from there. We decided to keep the news to ourselves because I didn’t want anyone to know until I felt that the baby was viable (about 12 weeks). It took some convincing for me to believe that it was even really happening. I got to see Georgia for the first time when I was 9 weeks pregnant. I went to the ER with a kidney stone and they decided to check and make sure the baby was okay. It was then that I got to see her heartbeat and was able to fully accept that I was pregnant.

From there, I had one week of pure joy and excitement before the morning (all day) sickness set in. At that point my pregnancy became really tough. I don’t think I ever had hyperemesis gravidarum (a super severe morning sickness), but I was throwing up 4-5 times a day and couldn’t keep anything down. The doctors finally listened and put me on a medication to slow down the vomiting (Reglan, in case you are pregnant and need a safe anti-nausea med).

During my pregnancy, I saw the regular OB and I saw a high risk OB. I saw the high risk OB do to some underlying conditions and to monitor the effects of the medications that I chose to stay on during pregnancy (that decision was made for MY health because if I wasn’t healthy I wouldn’t have been able to grow a tiny human). One cool side effect of my pregnancy was that my Fibromyalgia pain was almost non-existent. Other than a few pregnancy aches, I was pain free for the first time in my life and my blood pressure was under control WITHOUT medication (though I know now that I should have continued blood pressure medication).

A lot of different things were happening around the 18 week mark. The doctors informed us that the baby was measuring small. She was a few weeks behind in growth (but developmentally on par with 18 weeks as far as they could tell). We didn’t think much of it because everything else was going so well with her. On July 4^th, 2019 I felt her kick for the first time. It brought such comfort and peace. All the while, I was silently suffering with Perinatal Depression (blog post coming next week).

When I reached 28 weeks, my depression began to lessen, and I felt real joy for the first time since I found out I was pregnant. I was ready to get things done for the baby (up to this point I had done nothing because I wasn’t in a place to). I started making all sorts of “to-do” lists and dreaming up how I wanted things to look in the house for her arrival. I don’t know how to put into words how much better I was feeling mentally. It could have been a surge of hormones but it felt like a peace had washed over me even though my blood pressure had been fluctuating that week.

The day after I reached 30 weeks, I went to a high risk appointment. That appointment changed everything. They checked on the baby and saw that she was still small, but they were okay with how she was doing. They were not however, okay with how I was doing. While I felt fine, my blood pressure was continuing to rise. The doctor there decided to send us to the hospital for observation over the weekend. So we took our time and ran home. I packed a bag with a blanket (I cannot stay anywhere without my giant fuzzy blanket) and some pajamas (there was no way I was wearing a stupid gown). Oh and I threw in some snacks because during the second trimester I learned I could stomach some snacks.

We got to the hospital, I was put on a magnesium drip (I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy) and within 8 hours I was sent to Yale (the fancier hospital with more specialists). There my blood pressure continued to rise and my kidney function began rapidly decreasing. I was feeling worse and worse. I’ll spare you all of the nitty gritty hospital details (aka vomiting, migraines, catheters…). After about a week, they finally decided to induce labor. They started with the folly cath. and we went from there. Only once it fell out they changed their minds again and stopped labor. Another day passed with more testing and FINALLY they diagnosed me with pre-eclampsia with severe features which meant labor had to begin again and the baby had to come out.

For 36 hours we tried the “natural” (I’ll cover why that’s in quotations in a later post) way of going into labor. It failed. I was miserable, the fluid retention in my body was at an all-time high (50lbs of excess water in case you wanted to know). So they stopped everything and began prepping for a C-Section. From there things went pretty fast and the rest is a story I will save for another day.

Overall, I hated being pregnant. I wanted it to end, but once it did I felt so guilty for feeling that way. It was too early and though I was over being pregnant, I would have held out if it meant protecting my sweet girl longer. I haven’t decided yet if I am ever going to do it again. However, I will say that as a first time mom, it was ALL worth it. Through all the difficult months and the sickness and the pain, I met the love of my life (Georgia), and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.