We're not going home without a baby?
I kinda started freaking out inside. I mean, I had prayed to get this baby out, but I didn't really think it'd happen! She told me I had severe pre-eclampisa and the only way to cure it was to deliver the baby. She said my shoulders hurting concerned her about my liver and they were going to draw some blood to check my levels, but everything should be ok. I'd made some good progress so they'd start me on pitocin and I'd have a baby either late that night or the next morning.
So off we went to the hospital. We called everyone who needed to know. My dad had to turn around and drive right home from North Carolina. The hardest person to call was my best friend, Miriam. She moved to Chicago last year and we had the perfect birth plan lined out to get her down for Reuben's birth, but it just couldn't work with a 3 week early induction.
We got checked in to the hospital around 11:45 and got our last family of two picture in!
Then I met our nurse, Bonnie. Bonnie was intense. I knew I was "sick" even though I felt great, but she kinda acted like I was a breath away from dying. My room was a phone, light, TV, talking, basically, fun-free zone. I had to lay on my left side with no one talking to me while they got stuff figured out. I had IVs started and my blood drawn and just hung out in my cold, dark room.
Dr. McGuinn came in pretty quick with my blood test results and said my platelets were low. Like really, really low. I don't know exactly what numbers mean but she said they were supposed to be in the 200s and mine were only 70. She had an anesthesiologist come in and they told me they'd only do an epidural if my platelets were 80 or higher. I asked Dr. McGuinn if there was really a chance they'd go up and she said maybe. So they checked my blood for the second time in an hour, while we prayed they'd go up!
In the meantime, we got moved to a real L&D room and they started me on pitocin. They figured they might as well start since nobody was really sure what was going to happen. My results came in soon after… my platelets were at 68. There was no going up. She told me the two scenarios she could think of:
1. Labor naturally. But odds of that were very, very slim because I still had 7.5 cm to go and if my BP got too high because of the pain there was a chance I could have a seizure or stroke. Then I'd have to have an emergency c-section and by that time they weren't sure if I'd have enough platelets to not bleed out during surgery.
2. C-section with general anesthesia. They'd knock me out so they could safely get him out, but it'd be hours and hours before I could see him. He'd be drowsy and I wouldn't remember anything. Not cool.
So Clint (who was secretly freaking out but hiding it well) went to see our parents in the waiting room and sent my mom in to be with me while they were figuring out what they wanted to do with me. My mom had pre-ecclampsia with me and my brother so she knew how sitting in a dark room alone felt. I was getting pretty upset because I didn't like either of my options and I didn't want to have to decide. I prayed that God would lead them in the right direction.
I said "amen" and the door opened and a guy I'd never seen walked in with Bonnie, my new nurse, Kirsten, the anesthesiologist and their helper, and my doctor. He sat down on my bed and told me he was a high risk maternal medicine dr that Dr. McGuinn had brought on my case to help her through. He went through the speel of how sick I was and all that jazz that I was so tired of hearing and then told me something I hadn't heard yet. He'd spoken with the anesthesiologists and they'd agreed to do a spinal block for a c-section, but only if we did it then.
Like RIGHT then.
They were prepping me without me even realizing it because I was so zoned into what this new doctor was telling me. I bust into tears from being so overwhelmed and asked my mom to go get Clint. He needed to be there. As she was walking out the door, he was walking in. The nurse handed him some scrubs and told him to put them on. Talk about being shocked! Poor guy. He handled it like a champ though! He was so strong through all of it. God knew I wouldn't be able to make it through without him. We prayed that God would be with Dr. McGuinn and get Reuben here safely and then just kind of breathed and laughed at how crazy of a day it'd been!
Then it was off to the OR!
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