Life So Far: A January Retrospective, Part 2

So after a delicious dinner at Noah and Kaila's, Erik and I went home. With work the next day, we did what we needed to prepare for the next morning and went to bed.

I'm not sure what woke me up early the morning of the 29th. The dog? My bladder? It could have been anything since I just wasn't sleeping much anymore. But when I was up and moving around at 4:30 am I thought to myself "I must have slept funny, my shoulder and side sure hurt." I tried to go back to sleep but it wasn't happening. I tried sitting up on the couch but it was really hurting. By this time I had woken Erik up with all my fidgeting and discomfort.

We tried using an heating pad on the hurt. We tried Tylenol. We tried Erik rubbing the hurt. Nothing was working. So he said "We're going to the Emergency Room." I didn't argue, so around 5:30 am, off we went. I think I was still in my pajamas. The hospital in Payson is only about five minutes away from our house but it seemed further. I just remember it was really cold outside and that every bump in the road we hit really hurt.

We checked in with the Emergency Room and they sent me right up to Labor and Delivery. It must have been near shift change or something because our first nurse wasn't there for very long and she didn't seem very helpful. She kept wondering why they sent me up to L&D for side pain. When they were doing the initial check on all my vitals they found that my blood pressure was sky high.

By this time we had a new nurse that had just come on shift. She was great. My doctor was called and he showed up around 7:30 am. He suggested that I would probably be having a baby in the few weeks. He called in another doctor to consult with after my blood pressure kept rising. Then they started talking about me having a baby in the next few days. All I kept saying was "We're not ready." Nothing on our beautiful list had yet been accomplished.

It turned out that I had developed Preeclampsia and probably HELLP Syndrome too. That shoulder and side pain? Bingo, classic symptoms.

They gave me an IV of magnesium sulfate that was supposed to bring my blood pressure down but the initial dose wasn't working. I remember looking at the monitor one time and seeing my blood pressure was something like 220/110. WAY TO HIGH. They wanted to get it down to around 160/90 because they were going to put me in an ambulance and send me to UVRMC in Provo. I was being sent to Provo because the hospital there has a NICU. It looked like we were going to be needing that pretty soon. I was 32 weeks pregnant.

While all this was happening we were on the phone calling family to let them know what was going on. We called our parents and they let everyone know what was going on.

Erik called his work to let them know he wouldn't be in. He was thinking we would be home by noon and we could take a long nap. Didn't work out that way.

I also made the call that I was dreading. My boss. Remember? Accountant? Quarter-end? The first time I called her was to tell her that I wouldn't be in that day because I wasn't feeling well but hopefully I would be in the next morning. My next call to her? That night to tell her I had just had Max earlier in the afternoon and that I probably wouldn't be in for a while. Shocked silence would probably describe her reaction best. Yeah, we had a lot of conversations over the next few days so that she could get all my work covered. I even went into the office one morning the next week to talk over some stuff. (And to use the fax machine so I could submit all the short-term leave paperwork they required.)