My Experience with Pregnancy and Preeclampsia

I was 19 years old when my husband and I learned that we were pregnant. We were ecstatic because we had been trying since we got married the year before. I was due December 2, 2004 and I just knew through the whole pregnancy that we were going to have a girl.

Until I was 6 1/2 months pregnant I had extremely bad morning sickness and was losing weight. I also found out when I was about 4 months pregnant that I had gestational diabetes (diabetes in pregnancy).

Then, when I was 30 weeks pregnant, I went to a routine doctor appointment and they took my blood pressure and weight and checked my urine as they always did. They came back to the room saying that they were extremely worried about me. My blood pressure had skyrocketed, my weight had gone way up in just a couple of weeks, and my urine test came back positive for protein: all signs of preeclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy). So the doctors sent me straight to the hospital. It was only a few blocks away and I have lived in this city for all of my life but I got lost because I was so frantic. When I got there, I then couldn't find my way around the hospital even though I had been there a thousand times! When I finally did find where I was going my husband, his whole family, and my whole family were already there waiting for me. They did some routine tests and said they were going to keep me overnight. I was not allowed to get up from bed even to go to the bathroom because they were afraid it would affect my blood pressure. They gave me steroid shots to help the baby's lungs develop in case I had to delivery pre-term.

Then day by day they continued doing tests on me until one day, 4 days after I was admitted, they said they were going to start inducing labor. I was so overwhelmed and was by no means prepared for something like this, especially 10 weeks earlier than I was supposed to! That day that they started inducing labor happened to be my husband and my 1 year anniversary so that was depressing to spend our anniversary in the hospital worried to death. The whole day they had me hooked up to an IV with pitocin and nothing happened. So, that night, they put some kind of medication in next to my cervix to soften it.

The next morning, at 8 a.m., the doctor came in while doing rounds and broke my water without even telling me! My husband was still sleeping on the pull-out couch next to the bed and got woke up by the talking. Almost instantly the contractions started. After about 3 hours of contractions I said I wanted an epidural. The anesthesiologist came in to give it to me and had to make 7 injections because I was so swollen that he couldn't get the needle as far as he needed to. Finally, he got it, but it must not have gotten all the way in because it only lasted for about 20 minutes and then it was time to push.

So 3 minutes of pushing later, my baby girl was born! She weighed 3 pounds 1/2 ounce and was so tiny I couldn't believe it. I looked at my husband and said "I told you she was a girl". She was in the NICU for 5 1/2 weeks and did great the whole time. She is now 3 1/2 years old and is smart and beautiful and you would never know she was a preemie. The nurses in the NICU took such good care of her I couldn't thank them enough!