Yes. Yes it happened. It is quite the story too my dear friends. I had a scheduled appointment on February 20th, I was 39 weeks and 5 days pregnant. I went in, they did their usual stuff; urine test, took my weight and blood pressure and sent me to the room to wait to be measured and checked by my doctor. Well, the last few weeks, they've had to take my blood pressure (bp) a couple times because it's been higher than they'd like. Same went for Thursday, it was high. But the second time they took it, it was still high...in fact, it was at 140/88 which was enough for my doctor to send me immediately over to Labor and Delivery for some testing. They monitored me for about 2 hours, consistently taking my bp and keeping track. Well, it went down to a comfortable range and after spending 4 hours with doctors, I was sent home with instructions to pay attention to headaches, dizziness and abdominal pain in the upper right side. When Scott and I got home, it was about 2:30-3:00, we were both pretty beat so we ate lunch pretty quickly and took a nap. We woke up just before 7:00, hung out until 9:00 and watched the BYU basketball game (against Gonzaga....which we won by the way). After the game, we got ready for bed again, but neither of us were tired because of the nap so we really just kind of laid there, chatted every once in awhile and tried to sleep. Well, around 1:00am, I had this intense, sharp, needle-like pain in my upper abdomen. It lasted for a good 5 minutes and it hurt, bad. I got Scott out of bed and we took my bp and tracked it for about an hour with the at-home monitor my parents brought by for me to use...thank heavens they did that. It had sky-rocketed! I was measuring at like 145/100, 139/99, huge numbers. So we called the hospital and they told me to come back in. So here we are, at the hospital at 2:00 in the morning, sure that they are going to test me again and just send us home like they have the last two times. Well they hooked me up, got it going and it stayed up....and stayed up, and stayed up. So the real issue with high blood pressure during pregnancy is that it is a symptom of preeclempsia which can be scary dangerous if not taken care of. If it's not caught, it can cause seizures, stroke and death for mother and baby. That is worst case, of course, but it can progress quickly. Well, I was diagnosed with preeclempsia and at 4:00am, I was admitted to the hospital to be induced.
I got the run down of how induction was going to work and what they were hoping to see. The problem was, I was only dilated to 2cm...which is very little. My doctor was worried about the labor being very long. They set me up and gave me pitocin to start my contractions at 5:20am. They got going real quick....real quick. I did a few rounds naturally and unmedicated. But it is very common for induced labor to be more painful because the cervix isn't ready so it's being forced a lot more than it would be just to open up. I could feel it. I asked for some medicine, however, I did not get the epidural. I instead was given Fenatryl which was given to me through my IV and basically just masked the pain. It worked for two rounds, about 3 hours, but with me still only dilated to a 2cm, they decided to break my water (weirdest....feeling...ever). By the third round of the Fenatryl, I could feel every contraction which were 2 minutes apart, lasting for about one minute to a minute and a half. Serious pain, man. Serious. And to make matters worse, I was only at a 3cm.
At this point, I asked for the epidural and they could not have been there any faster. The actual epidural wasn't bad, I could hardly feel him putting it in. But I was screaming with serious pain from my contractions. I felt like I was going to throw-up, cry and explode all at once. It took about 10 minutes for the epidural to kick in and man was I glad for that. After that, I literally could not feel a thing. It was beautiful. So here I am, in labor for about 5 hours now and not having any progress. We were pretty discouraged because it was making for a long day. But my doctor came back in and checked me around 3:00 and was surprised to feel that I was now at 8cm! She told me that she would be back soon to check again and see when we could start pushing. Well, I'm sitting there, screaming about how hard it is to already not push and the anesthesiologist came back in because I was needing more of the epidural; it was fading. He gave me more medication and it hadn't even been 10 minutes before the nurse came in to check my cervix again. I was fully dilated! I went from an 8cm to 10cm within 10 minutes! No wonder I was wanting to push and I was feeling so much more than I had been. Wow!
There was a problem, however. My doctor was no longer in the building. The nurse called my doctor and she said that she wanted me to wait for an hour because the baby wasn't facing the right direction. So they readjusted my legs and with the higher dose of the epidural, I couldn't feel any contractions so I wasn't feeling like I HAD to push. I took a nap while I waited the hour. So now it's just past 4:00, I've just woken up from my nap and the nurse came in to have me start pushing. She told me how it was going to work; I would grab my legs just above the knee, crump myself forward like I was doing a sit up, breathe deeply and push. I was NOT to exhale while I pushed. Well, the contraction came and I pulled my legs (with the help of Scott and my mother) towards my chest, tucked my chin towards my abs, and pushed for 10 seconds. I got a quick breath and pushed for 10 more seconds, one last breath and pushed for 10 seconds. Round one of pushing was over. The next contraction came and the same thing of three sets of 10 second pushes. At this point, we could see that baby was crowning! Already! We decided to do one more set of three and then call my doctor to come up. So we did, the contraction came, I did three sets of 10 second pushes and...the nurse looked at me with a glint of panic. Baby was coming and she was coming fast. We needed my doctor RIGHT NOW. So she ran out and called her and told her that she needed to get there. I was directed to put my legs down, flat on the bed and bring them together a little bit. Baby was coming without me even pushing! Well, we had three nurses in the room in a panic because we had no doctor and a baby that was about to pop out. The nurses got sterile gloves on and prepared to deliver the baby. Just then, Doctor Grover rushed in the room and threw her gown and gloves on, put a bag under me and I brought my legs up. Then, pop! There was baby! I had only three rounds of pushing and then she did all the work herself! They put her up on my chest, Scott and I teared up a bit and I knew this was our baby, Melia Elise Christensen.
She was born at 4:48pm, weighed 8lbs 2oz and is 19.5 inches long.
Together, we will Keep Moving Forward
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