On Tuesday, September 21st, I went in to the Maternal-Fetal Medicine office at St. Mark's for my routine Non-Stress Test.
Here I am, hooked up to the monitors:
This is the computer screen with the read out of Sophia's heart rate
(the squiggly blue line in the thick turquoise line)
The graph on bottom would show if I were having contractions.
At this appointment, they took my blood pressure and it was a whopping 207/127
(bear in mind that normal is 120/80).
The technician doing my NST tried a new blood pressure cuff, but the reading was still the same.
So, she called Dr. Sloan.
I was supposed to have had an appointment that afternoon with Dr. Sloan,
but she told the technician to take me down to Labor and Delivery and that she would meet me there.
They made me get in a wheelchair.
Then they wheeled me through the most crowded waiting room I had ever seen
- it had never been that busy before, but on the day I get wheeled out of the office,
there just had to be twenty people there to witness it!
We got down to L and D and they took me straight to a delivery room (yikes!) instead of the triage room.
They hooked me up again to the non-stress test monitors and began to take my blood pressure periodically.
Slowly but surely my blood pressure began to decline.
And then some random guy and girl walked into my room asking if I wanted to participate in a study about pre-eclampsia. I wanted to, but my blood pressure jumped up 30 points once they came in, so we decided it would be better if I didn't participate.
They came back 10 minutes later to tell me that they wouldn't be coming back. Weird.
When Dr. Sloan saw that my blood pressure was coming down without the aid of medication, and that my blood work came back normal, she said she wanted a 24-hour urine test again, but that she thought I'd be able to go home the following day.
After a terribly uncomfortable night (those delivery beds are not meant for sleeping!) and only 45 minutes of sleep, I finally finished the 24-hour urine collection around 4 pm. Thinking that they'd be sending me home as soon as they got the results back, they gave me dinner around 5 pm. A few minutes later, the results came back and it turned out that the protein count in my urine had doubled in only four days.
So, Dr. Sloan said it was probably time to induce labor, but since I had just eaten, they would need to wait several hours because I might get nauseous.
They started the pitocin at 12:00 am Thursday, September 23rd.
By 8 am or so when Dr. Sloan came in, my labor had still not really started, and I was dilated to a 1.
Then Sophia's heartrate dropped dramatically. They had me roll over on my side.
Fortunately, her heartrate went back up.
They think she was laying on the umbilical cord.
But because her heartrate went down, they had to take me off pitocin. And when they put me back on it, they had to start me back on the lowest dosage.
It wasn't working.
I was having contractions, but was making no progress.
My body wasn't ready for labor.
I ate a lot of ice chips.
Dr. Sloan came back to the hospital around 5 pm.
I was still barely dilated to a 1.
So she presented our options to us:
1- Deliver now by C-section
OR
2- Wait a few hours, then try to induce labor again with a different medication
I really did not want either option, but I especially did not want to go through surgery.
Dr. Sloan left the room so Danny and I could talk about it.
After 10 minutes of Danny and I telling each other that we had no idea what to do, Dr. Sloan came back.
We hadn't made a decision.
I asked her if there was a chance that I could do bedrest in the hospital for several more days
and wait until week 36 to deliver Sophia.
She said that it wasn't really the standard of care to do that,
and even if we did, it might not do Sophia any good to stay in any longer,
especially if my placenta was deteriorating, as it most likely was.
And at that moment,
a thought came to my mind.
It was:
The most important thing is doing what's best for Sophia.
It doesn't matter if I have a longer recovery or if I'm afraid of major surgery.
I need to have a C-section.
It was suddenly clear what I needed to do.
And I was no longer scared and unsure.
It was pure inspiration from Heaven,
and I am so thankful that it came
at the precise moment
I needed it.
Confidently,
I told Dr. Sloan that I felt like I should do a C-section.
So, we got ready for surgery.
Here I am:
Ready to go!
It was 6:00 pm when we decided to have a C-section.
By 6:45 pm, we had our Sophia:
Dr. Sloan said that the umbilical cord had been wrapped around Sophia's neck twice.
She thinks that if we had decided to induce labor with the different medication
that we still would have ended up in the operating room.
I know we made the right choice.
