Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Hospital Stay, Part 1: Monday

Gah. This is going to be long, no matter what I do. I guess it's going to be in parts, because it's taking time to process the odd mix of things going on. The current status, here on Wednesday afternoon, is that Leaf is doing really well, and my BP is under control with meds, and we're waiting to see whether or not it stays that way. No pre-ecclampsia yet, just pregnancy induced hypertension.


Monday morning was my regularly scheduled MFM (maternal-fetal medicine, or high risk OB) appointment. I've seen them every 4 weeks since January, and my regular OB in between each of those appointments since late December - so, in short, I've seen some sort of OB every 2 weeks since I was about 6 weeks pregnant, so this appointment, 1 day short of 24 weeks, was not out of the ordinary.

Less than 2 weeks ago, my blood pressure was 114/72 at the endocrinologist's office. There was no reason to check in between - sure, I'd had a bit of swelling of my feet & ankles but my shoes still fit, and my rings still fit on my fingers, so it wasn't that bad...especially since swelling came up in every pregnancy tracker in the last week or two as well.


At any rate, my BP at the doctors' office Monday was running 180s over 100s.

Not good. Really not good. Like, "might fall over dead and stroke out" not good.

Thing is, I felt fine. Which sucks, because the things they do to bring down blood pressure that high? They make you feel awful.

I went straight to labor and delivery from the doctors' office - they actually wheeled me across the hospital in a wheel chair. Immediately, BPs were checked (and were worse), an IV went in, blood work was drawn, monitors went on the baby, and meds started running to try and bring things down.

I called my husband at that point to come home - I was willing to wait it out and see what was going to happen, but at that point, I knew that this was not good, and that I was going to be here a while.

For what it's worth, I remember how magnesium felt when I had it with Acorn. It still sucks. And not being allowed out of bed is horrible. And foley catheters suck. And not eating for a whole day just makes things really surreal.

After magnesium was started, and several rounds of various IV meds were given,  things were looking better, but my heart rate and Leaf's were close enough to the same that figuring out which of us was on the fetal monitor was a challenge, so they decided to switch BP meds to something that we know causes me to have headaches, but would improve everything else. Worst case, they could always give good drugs if the headache got too bad.

Sure enough, that first oral dose brought things down to "too low" (and caused horrific vomiting, and a headache), but we were now on the right track. High risk OBs came in to discuss, and suggested that if we could get things stable....I might be able to go home and wait things out there with extra monitoring.

And then they had the NICU send someone down, which will be the topic of the next post on this subject.

Monday night was little sleep, and uncomfortable, but we made it through.

I want to thank nurse M, one of our NICU favorites from Acorn's stay, who, when she saw us pop up on the NICU boards as a potential admit, said a string of cuss words and then came to hang out for an hour or so after her shift, both Monday and Tuesday - no repeat offenders, keep that baby cooking, she says. That, and if we make it to even 30 weeks, we'll be so much better off than with Acorn. She warns, however, that if I'm on magnesium when I deliver, even a nearly full term baby will likely spend a few days on a ventilator.

And I want to thank R, a friend from a local crunchy parenting board, and a Goddess-sister of mine, for coming to sit with me Monday while my husband went home to sit with Acorn between day nurse leaving and K getting out here to keep him until night nurse arrived.

Their support made Monday a lot less stressful than it could have been.

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