We are incredibly underappreciated for everything that we do.
I was teaching when I was pregnant, and everything was really great from the beginning, and everything was going well, and morning sickness wasn’t really a huge deal. I would get evening sickness, but it was like, I would throw up one time and I’d be done and I’d be fine the rest of the night.
Second day of spring break, and I have my regular 32 week checkup. I go in and all of a sudden, people are kind of, like, coming in and out of the room and talking quietly around me. And I’m like, “what’s happening?” And they were like, “we need to send you upstairs for some additional testing. Your blood pressure is really high. Are you experiencing this, this, or this?” And I was like, “no, I feel totally normal.” They’re like, “okay, well, we’re going to send you upstairs for some tests.” And I’m like, “okay…”
My husband’s at work. I didn’t call him to be like, “you need to get up here.” I just texted him and said, they’re sending me upstairs for tests. I get my hospital bracelet. I get put into a room, and I don’t know, it’s like the women’s pavilion. It was like a special ER without the people coming in with broken arms and stuff.
So they put a blood pressure cuff on me, and they’re like, “here’s a bucket. And here’s the thing. And every time you need to go pee, you need to collect it in here and put it in here and keep it in a cooler.” And I was like, “what’s happening?” And they’re just like, “we just need to check to see if you have protein in your urine.”
We’re checking for some things, but nobody’s really saying big words yet. They’re not really explaining what’s happening. And then they’re coming in every 15 minutes or so and taking my blood pressure and switching arms and doing all of this. And I’m just sitting in this room by myself, like, “what’s happening?”
So obviously my nerves are starting to pick up a little bit. I’m still just texting Jimmy, and he decides that he’s going to try to head up there. From my recollection, it was just like, the door opened and these people are like, “okay, so here’s the thing. You’ve got severe preeclampsia. Your blood pressure is dangerously high.”
I lose it, and I just start bawling. And they’re like, “you really need to try to calm down. You really need to try to calm down. Your blood pressure is too high. You need to calm down.” And I’m like, “what? How do you calm down when you were just told something like that?”
My actual doctor comes in, and she’s kind of like she’s trying to put my mind at ease because she finally made it up from her practice downstairs, and she’s like, “so this is what we’re dealing with. We’re going to have a specialist come in and talk to you and decide maybe you can go home and be on bed rest. Maybe you need to be checked into the hospital for a little bit. We’re going to kind of feel things out.” And I’m still a massive wreck, but I’m like, okay.
After more waiting and more waiting, this doctor guy comes in, and he pretty much flat out tells me, “your blood pressure is too high for you to go home because the kind of rest you need, you can’t do. Because if somebody knocks on your door, you’re going to want to know who it is. If a package gets delivered, you’re going to want to get up and go grab it. You cannot do that.” So he’s like, “we’re admitting you to the hospital right now.”
I’m still by myself at this point, and so now I’m still freaking out, and they move me into a room, and they’re still just monitoring my blood pressure at that time. And then again, it felt like things came in waves where people just come into my room and be like, “announcement, there’s this major thing happening to you now.” And they came in and they’re like, “okay, we’re going to have to place your IV and your catheter now. We need to give you magnesium to keep you from having a seizure. But because of the magnesium, you won’t have control of your bladder.”
So with no real pre-warning, it was literally like, we’re here to do this right now. No time to process what’s happening. I’m calling Jimmy and I’m crying, and I’m like, “please get here.” Because I think at one point I had asked him to go home and take care of our dog, to go let him out and feed him and stuff because he was still my baby at that point. But I was like, “please come. They’re going to catheterize me, and they’re doing an IV, and it’s really scary and blah, blah, blah, blah.”
Getting that magnesium medication is not fun. It’s probably, like, way melodramatic, I guess. But it’s really hot when it goes into the IV, and they put ice packs on you around where it goes, but it feels like somebody’s trying to break your bones inside your arm. It just was really painful. There was just this pressure right here where the IV was, and I was like, “this is terrible!” And that started my two week stay.
They were doing construction at the hospital, and they didn’t have a better room for me. My room was right by the doors from the waiting area, so every time somebody came in, the automatic doors would slam. So, like, all day and all night, I was hearing the door. My TV didn’t really work, and I didn’t have a window, so I didn’t see sunlight for two weeks, and they kept saying, like, “oh, maybe we can take you for a walk outside.” But then nobody ever did.
I wasn’t allowed to get up to go to the bathroom. I had to stay in bed. And I was hooked up constantly to the blood pressure cuff. It would go off automatically once an hour. I had little inflatable things on my legs to try to keep me from getting clots. It was super annoying. But I’m like, “okay.”
I just slept a lot and tried to not be stressed out about things, but my blood pressure just remained ridiculously high the whole time. I would be like, ‘my blood pressure is going to go off in five minutes. Let me put it on the relaxation channel.’ And it did nothing. It was still really high.
I missed my baby shower because of it, because it was supposed to happen during that time. When I was in the hospital, I had a really sweet nurse, and I think he went to Macy’s or Dillard’s and he bought me some stuff, and he was like, “since you missed your baby shower…” and it was like a picture frame and a little teddy bear and a onesie. It was really sweet. He was great.
They would do ultrasounds every once in a while, but I never got to see them. They wouldn’t let me look at the screen or anything. I don’t know. I’m like, “can I see my baby?” And they’re like, “no, the doctor has to talk to you about it.” And I’m like, “I don’t know what this means.” So I’m there.
I was checked in at 32 weeks. The goal was to get me to 35. Like, they really wanted me to try to make it to 35 weeks. And at 33 weeks, five days, they had come in and done an ultrasound. And I’m like, “everything looking good?” And she’s like, “I can’t tell you anything. (Click.) The doctor is going to have to tell you”, which, side note-
After the day I got checked into the hospital, I didn’t see my doctor again. A different doctor was coming to check on me. And I’ll get to why that is in a minute. I just was like, whatever. I don’t know. Maybe she’s busy, but they did the ultrasound.
The lady rolls her little cart out of the room, and I swear, ten minutes later, this big burly nurse that I had just, like, slams the door open, starts erasing stuff on my board, and she’s like, “you’re having your baby tomorrow morning.” I was like, “what?” And they’re like, “your doctor is going to be delivering at 07:00 a.m. tomorrow, so we need to start going over some things.”
They didn’t give me at that moment a specific reason why. They just said some of the things we’re seeing on the ultrasound, we need to go ahead and deliver baby. Okay? So she was born at 33, six.
So they’re like, “we’re going to come in at five. We’re going to do this. We’re going to get you prepped. We’re going to take you back. You’re going to do the thing.” Of course it’s scary. I was scared both for myself because of the pain and just everything going into a C section and whatnot. And then I was scared about what was wrong with her and what we were going to find out. So I was just an emotional wreck.
I remember getting my spinal block, and just, like, asking the nurse. She gave me a pillow to hug while I was hunched over for them to do it. And I was like, “will you please hold my hand?” Because they wouldn’t let Jimmy in the room during the spinal block. Something to do with the sterilization in the room or something. So they’re like, once your spinal block is done and we have you set up on the table, we’ll bring him in.
I actually don’t really remember if it was painful or not, because I think I just blocked that part out. I just remember asking her, “please, will you hold my hand?” Because I just felt really alone and scared. And then my doctor showed up and delivered, and I heard her little teeny tiny scream, and she sounded like a baby cheetah or something.
It was just the tiniest little squeaks. And they held her up really quick over the curtain and then whisked her off to the ICU, and they were like, “Dad, come with us. Mom’s going to be fine. Come with the baby.” They wanted him staying with her the whole way, which I really appreciated. I was like, “yes, I’m glad you’re with baby.”
He left the operating room, followed her up to the NICU, where they got her hooked up to stuff and everything. She never had to be intubated. They did a little bit of oxygen, but she did have a feeding tube because she was so early. They don’t have that ability yet. And then they suture me all up, and they wheel me into the recovery room.
Within minutes of my body being stitched up, they had me hooked to a breast pump. So I’m like, “I’ve just been sewn up from this major surgery.” And they’re like, “we’re going to lift the top of your bed, and we’re going to start pumping.” And I’m like, “okay, this is so weird. This is crazy.” But then I started having an allergic reaction to one of the medications they’d given me, and I was like, “there’s ants under my skin,” and I’m just, like, scratching, and I can’t stop. And I’m like, “it is so bad. You all, it is so bad. What’s happening?”
Then they give me something to counteract that, which whacks me out like, I am zombie mom. I was awake, but I was just so out of it. And they were so concerned with getting every little drip drop of colostrum that they could try to get from my body that if there was a drip left on the edge of my nipple, they would use a syringe and suck it up and squirt it into the bottle. They were all up in my biz for every little drippy drop they could. It was really weird.
I mean, I appreciate that you’re trying to give this nutrition to my baby, but holy crap, like, what the hell. So then I’m back in my room. I’ve got the blood pressure cuff going every hour and I’ve got the leg things puffing up and going down. And I’m whacked out because of the medication that they’ve given me. And they’re still coming into my room every 2 hours to hook me up to a breast pump. Both sides at the same time.
And I still haven’t seen my baby yet.
And I’m like, “when do I get to see my baby?” And they’re like, “we’ll take you over there later.” And I’m like, “I want to see my baby.”
It is evening, and she was born at 8:05 am. Jimmy is just spending his time going between the NICU a couple of floors up, and then to me, and then NICU, and then down to me. So I just kept asking, “when am I going to see my baby? When am I going to see my baby?” And they’re like, “oh, we’ll take you, we’ll take you.”
Nobody ever did. And the next morning I’m like, throw this dirty ass hair in a ponytail, put on this stupid nightgown. Take me to see my baby. And the nurse is just like, “let’s get you cleaned up.” And they removed the catheter and they’re like, taking their sweet time doing all this stuff and “let’s go to the bathroom on the toilet. I’m going to teach you how to use this bottle.” And I’m like, “let me see my baby.”
I was getting so pissed at her. And I know I was not being a pleasant human being, but I was like, I want to see my baby. And finally they’re like, okay. And they find a wheelchair and they put me in it and they open my door and roll me out. And my doctor who delivered just happens to be at the nurse station.
She’s like, “hi, have you seen her? She’s so beautiful.” And I said, “I haven’t.” And her face dropped. And she was like, you are kidding me. I said, “no. Nobody has taken me to see my baby.” This is now a full 24 hours.
She’s like, “I cannot believe that- you get up there right now.” And I was like, “I’m trying.” So they wheeled me up and they had her little NICU bed, like really high up. And I couldn’t see her because I was in the wheelchair. And I was trying to get myself out of the thing. And they’re [like], “no, no, you’re going to hurt yourself.” I was like, “I need to see my baby.” Almost screamed.
Probably did a little bit, actually, but somebody came in and went [neeer (the sound of an automatic bed lowering] and lowered the bed so I could see her.
I sent you some pictures. And there’s the one where I’m wearing the blue nightgown, and she’s holding both of our fingers at the same time. That was my first time seeing her.
They eventually, later that day, moved me into a different room that was on the same floor as the NICU. And I was like, all right, it’s time to make things happen. I got up and I walked to the shower, and I bathed, and I washed my hair, and I was like, I’m going to put these pants on. And I just muscled through. I was like, Damn it all.
We went home on our wedding anniversary and just went up a couple of times a day, did the every two hour pumping, every four hour pumping at night, just a whole lot with the sanitizing and everything that we had to do because she was so new. But she came home after 19 days.
Two weeks after she came home, I was breastfeeding her on the couch, and she finished. I put her up on my shoulder to burp, walked into the kitchen to go get something, and that’s when I noticed she had turned blue.
Immediately freaked out. But in the CPR classes, they say to say their name loud and pat them very firmly on the back. So from my kitchen to her bedroom, which is honestly maybe 20ft, 25 maybe, I’m just saying her name constantly, patting her back really hard. And by the time we got to her room, which I was heading that way, because that’s where the directions for baby CPR were. I really did not want to have to do baby CPR, but I realized I might need to, and I wanted the directions even though I passed the class. They actually make you do that.
To leave the NICU, for her to leave, she had to hit four pounds of weight. She had to be able to maintain her own temperature, and she had to be able to nurse and breathe at the same time. You’ve got to bring your car seat in, and they have to be able to stay in the car seat for 30 minutes without having any breathing difficulties or any problems. And then if they pass that, that’s your final thing. But then they make you watch a video about how to perform infant CPR, and they give you the poster.
So she had regained her color. She was screaming at me, because obviously I’d been yelling her name and patting her real hard. I called her pediatrician, who said, “it’s great that she’s breathing, but you need to take her to Texas Children’s Emergency Room right away,” which is about 45 minutes away from the house with traffic. So we got there, there was a whole lot of waiting around.
They didn’t actually want me feeding her while we were there because they were waiting to see what they needed to do and what needed to happen. So we’ve got a very unhappy baby, a very hungry baby. They have these little packets of sugar water and they’ll just syringe sugar water in their mouth and [the baby is] like, “that’s fantastic!”
It appeased her enough. She went through a lot of those. But I was dying because it had been way too long since I had pumped and I didn’t have anything. And I’m shoving paper towels down my shirt and they were doing lots of tests and lots of monitoring and putting the stickers on for the heart monitoring, but they were the wrong size because they were the adult size and not the infant size. And having to pull those off right after putting them on was horrible. But she was only there for three days and they just told us that there was really nothing that they could diagnose, but that more than likely it was reflux.
They had like a code name for these events that happen that are life threatening and you don’t know what the cause is. I can’t remember what it is, but it’s an acronym.
They’re like, “yeah, so it’s probably just reflux. You need to make sure that you’re not feeding her more than an ounce.” And I’m like, “that’s what we feed her.” And they’re like, “because when we fed her two, the milk came out of her nose.” I was just like, super duper !Because that’s not at all what I told you. Hated that.
I know Texas Children’s is supposed to be the best children’s hospital, but they did us so dirty, like with the whole, like, “oh, don’t feed her, 2oz comes out of her nose,” even though we told them she only ate one. And then the day that she was discharged, they found a bruise on her leg and I told them I was like, “it’s from that thing you all put on her.” It was like on the bottom of her stomach. I was like, “she didn’t come in with that bruise. When you all put those giant human adult sized stickers on her and ripped them off and then put them back on again, you did that.” But they reported it to our pediatrician.
I’m like, “Y’all, it’s from that sticker, you can see it, it’s a right angle.”
She gets released after three days and then we schedule a follow up with our pediatrician, like the day after we get home, because that’s what we were supposed to do. She’s like, “okay, so their report to me says that you were feeding her too much.” And I said, “they fed her too much, that’s not us. I said when we got there, we told them how much she eats. 1oz. They tried feeding her too, and made milk come spraying out of her nose.” And she was like, “okay.” She’s like, “yeah, all right.” Because she also knew we had the little prepackaged pre meat formula bottles, and they only contain an ounce, so that’s all we could feed of those at a time.
She’s like, “I’m not worried about that. You’re fine.” And she’s like, “then they wanted me to check out a bruise.” She undresses the baby and looks at the bruise, and I was like, “I told them where that bruise came from. She did not show up to the hospital with that. And I said, they put adult sized monitor stickers on her, ripped them off a few minutes later so she could have an X ray and then put more on. They weren’t the infant size.” And she was like, “why did they even tell me about this?” She’s like, “you can tell it’s a right angle. That’s very obviously from a square sticker.” And I was like, “thank you for believing me, Doctor.” So we still use that same pediatrician because I honestly love her. She’s on your side.
For a while, she took compounded banana flavored reflux medicine that she absolutely despised. Banana flavored. That’s what they said was tolerated the best. It was horrible. I tasted it.
With her birth, it was traumatic for myself and for her. And I think for a really long time, I did not let myself mourn the fact that I didn’t have the pregnancy and the birth that I had dreamt of. Because I was born with a hip problem. I’ve had lots of surgeries on it. And because of that, my doctor did not feel comfortable having me go through actual labor because her concern was that if I get an epidural and I’m not feeling pain, that I could stretch my hips in a way that might cause additional damage and I might not be able to feel what I’m doing. So she said, I really think it’s best that we have a planned C-section. So I had it all paid for already.
I had already paid for my hospital stay, and it was all booked, and it was just going to be waking up in the morning, taking my shower, showing up to the hospital, and then going to have a baby, and it just being easy breezy. And it was not, obviously from the story that I’ve told.
I would realize it when people around me would get pregnant and they would have a really sweet baby shower and then having a nice normal birth or having really cute pictures of themselves pregnant. And I don’t even know what I looked like.
I have a picture of me from Valentine’s Day. My co-teacher that I worked with was like, “you look so cute. I am taking your picture today.” It’s the one picture I have of me pregnant.
[Later] I wasn’t out of bed, there wasn’t a full length mirror. So even when I did get to stand up and take a shower before surgery, I don’t know what I looked like. I don’t know what my pre birth belly looked like. So I don’t know how big I was or anything.
It’s like there’s just lots of little things that I missed out on. Seeing friends go through it, that I was like, oh, I missed out on that. That kind of sucks.
When Jimmy and I got married in 2007, we always wanted to have two. We always wanted to have two kids. That was our plan. We were going to have two. And if it was a girl/girl or a boy/boy or a girl/boy, it didn’t matter. We were going to have two children.
When I was pregnant with Dylan, we bought new Christmas stockings and I bought one for the child we would have in the future because it was the plan to have two. But after everything we went through with my health and the doctor saying there’s no guarantee that you’re not going to get it, and there’s no guarantee that you are going to get it, but if you decide to get pregnant again, you are going to be a very high risk pregnancy. And I would have had to take aspirin every single day and do stuff to try to counteract the possibility of preeclampsia.
She turned one and it was like, “yay, she’s one! Trauma is still too fresh. I’m not ready.” And then she turned two and it was like, “the trauma is still way too fresh. I’m not ready. I can’t put myself through this again.”
What I found out later- the day that I got checked into the hospital, my doctor left on vacation the next day and she apologized after the fact and she said, “I had a really difficult decision to make. I could either tell you that I was leaving town and have that upset you so bad that your blood pressure went through the roof, causing you to go into a seizure, or I could keep it to myself, just try to let you rest and know that you’re in good hands with other people.” And that was the thing she chose. Was it the right decision? I don’t really know, but it’s what happened.
It wasn’t until after I was discharged and I had my hospital notes that the reason why I had to go and have her the following morning was because I was at an extremely high risk of having an abruption. There was not enough fluid and she was in pretty big danger. I know it seems really weird and I know a lot of it was they were trying to be helpful to me, I guess, in some kind of way. But it was hard not being told things as they were happening.
About five years ago, I found out I had to have a hip replacement done. At that time, I was still asking my surgeon, “am I going to be able to carry a baby?” It’s a young age to have a hip replacement. Usually those people aren’t reproducing.
“Is it going to be safe for me to carry a baby?” And he’s like, “yes. You will have to wait one full year after total recovery, though.” That was kind of my big eye opener, where I went, I’m not thinking this is in my best interest. Up till then, it was just like, ‘no, I’m not ready.’ That was such a scary experience for me and for baby, and it was really hard. I don’t know if I’m ready to do that again. And then with that doctor telling me I would have to wait a full year after total recovery, which is essentially a two year wait, and I said, I’m going to be a lot older.
I will be approaching 40. I’m not going to be in any better health than I am now. My risk factors for having another not very friendly pregnancy are just going up and up and up and up and up. I felt peace with that decision immediately.
I just told [my husband], I was like, “I really don’t think I want to have another baby. I know it’s what we always talked about, and it’s what we always wanted. I don’t think I can do it.” And he was like, “well, we can just wait and we can give it some time. I always wanted to have two. I would really love to possibly have a boy”- like all of those things that men do, and I was just, “okay, that’s that’s fine. My mind never changed.”
And then when Roe versus Wade got overturned, I was like, “Jimmy, you need to go get fixed.” And he’s like, “Why? All of a sudden are you all over this whole me getting a vasectomy thing? Why is this all of a sudden coming up with Roe v. Wade? Why?” He was not understanding. And I was like, “I do not want to have another child. And God forbid, if I accidentally get pregnant and something really bad happens, I don’t want you to have to decide between my life or the life of the baby. That’s really scary to me, and I don’t want it.”
He’s like, “well, what if we change our minds?” And I told him, “my mind’s been made up for five years. I’m not doing it.” And then he’s like, “okay, well, then what we’re doing is working.” And I was like, “what I’m doing is working. You ain’t doing nothing, so your time’s coming.”
Which he still is not in for it. So when I see my doctor this year, I’m going to ask her about a tubal. And if I come home with an estimate for me having another major surgery, maybe he’ll be like, “Oh.”
All content and information on this blog is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult your doctor for advice on your particular medical situation.
To read more about Preeclampsia, The Mayo Clinic has an overview. The Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine also has information specifically on severe preeclampsia.
For a short overview of NICU needs by week’s gestation, Verywell Family has some information. This mother’s baby was born just before 34 weeks.
The acronym for Apparent Life-threatening event in NICU babies is ALTE. The National Library of Medicine has more information.
For information related to birth control as affected by the Roe v. Wade overturn, please see this National Women’s Law Center article.