A Pre-Eclampsia Story

I had a perfectly normal pregnancy and expected it to stay that way. I had the usual morning sickness (with me it was more like all day sickness), but it only lasted three months, which was not too bad. I gained a normal amount of weight, and I didn't really have any bad swelling. At seven months I got a bad case of food poisoning, but even through that nothing happened that hurt my baby, and I was able to sail through. That is, until my 34th week.

At the beginning of my 34th week I began to feel pretty sickly. (I now know that I was starting to have symptoms of pre-eclampsia). I went in to Labor and Delivery at the hospital I was planning to give birth at. I was examined, and told I was having false labor and to go home. When I asked why it hurt so bad to walk or move, I was told that "being pregnant is painful" and that I would be able to continue on to a full-term delivery.

One week and one day later, I noticed I couldn't close my hands. My fingers and the rest of my palms were swollen and bloated looking. So were my feet. I knew pregnant women ocassionally swelled due to fluid, so at first I wasn't worried. But then it seemed to be getting worse, so I waited until my husband got home and called the doctor. He first asked me why I didn't call sooner (I didn't want to be a pain, I thought it was probably nothing) and then preceded to tell me to go to the hospital. I thought I'd just be sent home again, but I knew the doctor was worried about pre-eclampsia.

Pre-eclampsia is a condition that happens in late pregnancy (after the 20th week) that happens in about 5% of pregnancies. It happens when your body begins to have a reaction to being pregnant, and you start to have changes happen like swelling, sudden weight gain, protein in your urine and high blood pressure. If left untreated, it can kill both the mother and the unborn baby. The only cure for this condition is usually early delivery, if the baby is mature enough.

By the time I got to the hospital, I was convinced that I wasn't going to have anything wrong. They put the monitors on me and my baby was doing just fine, I wasn't having any contractions and they decided to test my urine and blood for protein. They also checked my blood pressure, which was just a bit high. They got concerned, however, when it got much higher in about a half hour. Also, they found protein in my urine. Combining all these symptoms with the swelling, I was given the diagnosis of pre-eclampsia.

The treatment was initially not going to be inducing labor. My baby was at 35 weeks, which is still considered premature and carries the possibility of delivering a child with lungs that haven't matured yet. So they were planning to give me magnesium, a mineral that is given to women to stop labor and also to lower blood pressure. I would have to stay in the hospital for three days on an IV of magnesium, and then have bed rest until I was ready to deliver. This was the plan that was started by the OB (obstetrical doctor) who was on staff at the hospital.

My own OB, though, had other ideas. He decided since my blood pressure wasn't coming down very quickly after a few hours of the magnesium IV (which burned SO bad when it was put into my bloodstream) that they would have to induce labor by breaking my water for me and using oxytocin to start contractions. When they examined me, they found I was already 2 cm dialated before any of the induction, so my doctor thought it was pretty much close to time for me give birth anyway.

I was induced, and 12 hours later I had my beautiful baby. She was perfect in every way, but they had a team of neonatal specialists there just in case. One of them noticed she seemed to be having a little bit of labored breathing, and knowing she was a five-week premature baby (weighing 5 lbs 13 oz) they decided to take her to the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit).

This was just the start of horrors for me, because I then found out that I wouldn't even get to spend time with my daughter for the first 24 hours! I was still not out of the woods medically, and since my blood pressure hadn't stablized yet, I had to stay flat on my back with the magnesium IV for another 24 hours after giving birth. My baby was taken to the NICU and remained there until after I was able to come visit her. Luckily, she was kept there just as a precaution, because her lungs had fully developed and she was able to eat on her own, the other hallmark of a healthy baby. My husband had gotten to spend time with her while I was in bed, so she did get to know her parents a little bit that day.

We were released after I was in the hospital for a total of four days, my baby daughter only spent three days in the NICU and then was able to come home. She is perfect, and has caught up to every milestone now at the age of 10 months. I just can't help but think if I'd been more aware of the symptoms of pre-eclampsia, and not so afraid to make my problems known, that I might have been able to keep my baby from being born early. I could have known that the discomfort that I was feeling a week earlier was part of pre-eclampsia. So, make sure you tell your OB about any issues you're having, no matter how small. If you think there's something worth asking about, do it, as you're the best judge of your own body.