So, I went to my doctor’s appointment on Tuesday the 19th to check on how my blood pressure was doing and guess what!? I was admitted to the hospital with severe preeclampsia. Unfortunately, that meant I was going to be there until baby arrived (which could have been weeks!).

I started out in labor and delivery, but it was a busy week for them, so I was moved out to postpartum (after being moved four times in labor and delivery), until Dr. Lazaro decided what to do. Several nurses joked about me being the only pregnant woman there. Everyone else already had their babies. One nurse even asked me where my baby was when Devin was helping me to the shower! I told her “Right here” and pointed at my belly. She just looked at me kinda funny and said “Oh”.

After talking with a specialist at Davis, Dr. Lazaro felt that it would be best to wait until Monday and then induce labor. That would put me at 34 weeks, with baby being 6 weeks early. I would have really liked to have given Connor as much time as he needed to grow and put on some weight, but the risk to me was to great and the benefit of waiting to small. I was given steroid shots to help develop baby’s lungs and we had two comprehensive ultrasounds done. It made me feel a lot better when he met every benchmark they were looking for. According to the nurses, he still could have spent up to two weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Sunday night, I was moved once again (back to labor and delivery) and given some medication that was designed to prepare my body for labor and to get things started. Monday morning at about 9am, I was given another medication similar to the first one that sometimes induces labor on its own. Apparently, that one worked, because I moved right into full on labor. At noon, the nurse was saying they expected the baby to arrive sometime between midnight and 3 AM. This scared me a bit because my contractions were less than one minute apart and had been for the last two hours. I was starting to become exhausted. Luckily, she was wrong and Connor was born at 2:54 PM, less than three hours later.

We were then moved (again) back to postpartum and Connor was taken to the NICU. Amazingly, he only had to spend one night there. He was brought back into my room by noon on Tuesday. The nurses and doctors kept saying, “I can’t believe he’s a 34 weeker! He’s doing so well.” Dr. Lazaro calls him the preemie with no preemie problems

We are back home now and doing great. It’s going to take a while to adjust to having a newborn in the house, but we have lots of help. Devin’s mom is staying with us for a couple of weeks and my mom will be doing the same

Filed under: Baby Updates