The following week on June 4th, I have my regular weekly appointment and when the nurse takes my blood pressure, she looks at me and says "you're not usually high, are you?" To which I promptly reply "no, never". She takes it again and again I am in the 140/90 range which is not horrible, but for someone who hangs around the 120/60 area, it puts up this big waving red flag. Great. So in a nutshell, they send me home with this jug to collect a 24 hour urine sample, tell me to take the next 2 days off of work and come back on Wednesday the 6th to check the bp again. I have never missed a day of work for anything pregnancy related so I don't like this one bit, but I follow the orders. Let me just say though, how difficulat it is to go home with the instruction that 'we have some concerns, so we need you to go home and relax'. Sure, no problem. I'll just relax. Go back on Wednesday and the bp is now 167 or 176 over something ridiculous. They take it again and it drops down to 158 over something - still too high. Oh yeah, I failed to mention that Erik also had a retreat coming up on Friday and Saturday for the class he had been teaching. Not as far away as the other trip, but 2 full days of class regardless. So I of course then burst into tears over the fact that we have one day until he is gone for a full week and I am now considered a moderate to high risk pregnancy. I have never been any risk, in fact, I tend to be a downright boring pregnancy! This is not right at all! They start talking preeclampsia and induction and all kinds things that terrify me. Ultimately, the decision made was to admit me for 24 hours of monitering and then determine what the risk factor truly is at this point. I'm a little relieved though none too happy about spending the night in the hospital. They get me all set up in my room and Erik goes to make arrangements for the kids and work and such so he can spend the night with me. Meanwhile, they hook me up to the monitor to take my bp every 10 minutes and lo and behold it begins to drop down to the 130's range. Amidst the variety of folks talking to me we go from checking to see if I am "favorable" for an induction to the possibilty of being sent home. Finally, I was discharged with instruction to once again 'take it easy', no more work, and twice a week visits to the clinic for bp and urine checks. I promise Erik that I get the message and I will not worry one bit about any of the dishes in the kitchen or laundry to be done. I will absolutely chill out until he gets back from his trip, and then I will breathe a huge sigh of relief and probably have the baby soon after he gets home once all the stress is gone.
So we decide to leave Q and A at the neighbors place overnight so we can just get a good night's rest. The next morning I get up and decide to do a little of my prenatal yoga to help me start the day nice and relaxed. It was working just fine until my water broke. And we're off again! Only this time we know we will not leave the hospital again without a baby. What I did not expect was that my labor would never really get started on it's own despite the water breaking. I called the midwife just to let her know we would probably be in sometime, but she quickly corrected me and let me know that under my current circumstances they wanted me to head right in to the hospital so I could be monitored there. Lovely. Again we do as we're told all the while waiting for some kind of regular contractions to kick in which they never do. That monster Pitocin is there just around the corner lying in wait for me, I just know it. My midwife checks in with me, we talk again of what some of the risks are that we are looking at with my water already broken and my bp still running on the high end of the spectrum. She said she would give it about 12 hours before she really starts getting pushy about moving things along. After she leaves, Erik and I talk and agree that if we end up with Pitocin, we really don't want to start the process at 8:00pm just as I'm really starting to get tired. So we set 2:00pm as the deadline.
Again, because of the stupid bp, I have to be - at the very least - hooked up to a fetal monitor along with periodic bp checks so I am not allowed to leave the room and wander the halls in an effort to get things moving.
They were kind enough to let me have some kind of wireless fetal monitor so I could at least pace around my room and we did have windows with a halfway decent view. Still nothing. 2:00 comes and goes. Around 2:30 Maggie - my midwife - and her student show up to discuss. It still takes me awhile, but Erik and I both know this is what needs to happen. We all have our vision of what our birth experience should look like, but I really did not want to be foolish either. So we give the green light to get the pit drip started. It takes awhile to actually get all that stuff going I guess, so it was actually around 4:30pm when they actually got me hooked up and they did still allow me to have some mobility instead of making me stay in the bed. I have to give a big kudos also to my L&D nurse whose name actually escapes me now, or Maggie who wrote the orders, but the Pitocin was not nearly as horrible as I had prepared myself for it to be. For the most part I still got breaks to rest a little in between contractions and to be honest the pain of my first 2 kids is lost in the fog of the past so I can not really say that the pain of these was significantly worse. Labor is labor. It hurts. Period. Finally, though, at 9:17pm, our second son was born.
So all of that to say we are pleased to introduce you to Milo Jude Young.
After a few minor issues that kept him in the NICU for about 4-5 hours we were finally all together by about 3:00am on Friday morning.
It truly did feel like one of those situations where a lot of undesirable factors and events came together all at once just to make things more complicated to navigate, but ultimately it worked out for the best as it removed the stress of trying to spend a week NOT having a baby. Erik did miss the first day of the retreat, but was able to be there on Saturday to wrap up as well as make the trip to southern Oregon and earn some money. Yeah, it wasn't entirely easy to be home without him, but I definitely felt far more confident doing that than the thought of going through the whole delivery without him there especially with the various decisions to be made. It is so true that every birth experience is just completely different, but it just helps to remind me that so are each of my children. I can't wait to see what new dynamic and joy and surprise Milo will bring to our family. Stay tuned . . . .
