Terriversary pt 1

In the world of my fellow preemie moms we have anniversaries and we have terriversaries.  Anniversaries are those things that come every year that you look forward to while our terriversaries are the occasions that we dread that come every year whether we like it or not.  We all have them, the day a loved one died or when a bad break up happened.  They are the bad days the ones we crawl under the covers and just hope for the day to end.  Tonight marks one of those days for me.  It is the day my pregnancy went to shit.  It turned what should have been the happiest few days of my life to probably the most terrifying.

My pregnancy up until this point had been pretty uneventful.  Other than lots of puking in the first and part of the second trimester things had been going as planned.  Baby and I had both been looking good.    I started getting some headaches at some point in June nothing horrible but out of the norm for me.  Being the stubborn new englander I worked right through it.  One day at school I was feeling kind of strange so I went down to the school nurse to get my bp checked.  It was high for me.  So I called my ob's office.  I told them the reading I think it was 130/85.  The nurse at the ob told me it was fine and not to worry about it.  Looking back now I should have pushed to be seen.  My bp pre pregnancy was 90s/60s so while it wasn't all that high it was a substantial increase for me.  It was around that time that the swelling started.  My feet were pretty bad but I have a job where I was on my feet all day long.  It was hot.  I was pregnant.  I thought it was normal.  Looking back at this picture of me from the last week of school I was already starting to really swell up.

In early July I wasn't feeling great but knew I had a doctor's appointment coming up and thought I could hold out.  July 3rd I felt horrible but thought I must have over did it in the sun at a bbq.  The fourth I spent sitting with my cankles up.  I should have known there was a problem when I was wearing my wife's shoes (I wear a 6.5 and she wears an 8).  My crocks didn't even fit.

I was feeling better after the holiday and worked my nanny job on the 8th.  I picked up Sophie and her friend Ashley at tennis camp and cooked dinner for the family.  On the way home I talked to my bff Miche and as I pulled into the driveway I was telling her how I was doing great and how excited I was for the end of September to come.  We said our goodbyes and I went in to have some dinner.  I ate hummus and tabouli on pita.  I think there was grilled chicken in there all I remember is the tabouli when I barfed it up.  A little while after dinner I started feeling sick.  I had been having horrible heartburn for a while so I reached for my tums and started popping them.  At about 10 we decided to go to sleep.  I laid down for a few minutes and had to get up and went to the bathroom to get sick.  Thats when the tabouli came back and I must say I have yet to be able eat it again with any enjoyment since then.  I went back to lay down but was back up in minutes.  When I returned Shazam asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital. I immediately said yes.  It was one of those times that I just knew something was not right.  Shazam and I decided that I must have food poisoning or a terrible bug.  We never considered that there was something really wrong.We drove the 10 minutes to the Hospital and when we got there the staff was less than on top of things.  They told be to pretty much get in line to be seen.  I had to get up and go throw up again and when I returned to the waiting room a pain which I now know as epigastric pain took over.  I pretty much commanded Shazam to get me some help.  After a very direct conversation someone came and took me away in a wheel chair and took us up to maternity.

Once in a room the nurse asked me to pee in a cup and then tried to take my bp.  She couldn't get the bed bp cuff to work.  I am not sure if that is because it was too high or if the thing just wasn't working but as soon as she got a reading she left the room very quickly.  There was a doctor in my room a moment later.  My bp and what I assume was protein in my urine confirmed that I had developed pre eclampsia and that I was going to have to deliver in the next 48 hours.  We were terrified.  The doctor left to find me a bed at a hospital with a nicu that could handle a 30 week preemie.  I got a steroid shot to help develop the babies lungs, morphine to help with the pain, and I started mag (the fire drug).  I think Shazam ran home at this point to walk the dog and get some supplies but at that point I was high as a kite from the morphine that things were a little fuzzy.  After an ultra sound of my liver to make sure things hadn't gone really crappy there and a quick peak at the baby I was off to town with the sirens blaring and lights flashing.  I remember trying to give Shazam directions to the hospital which must have seemed crazy to the nurses but I am the navigator of the family and she had to drive alone.  By this point it was the wee hours of the 9th.

This is the day when it all changed. What every my birth plan had been and my plans for my babies infancy went down the drain with that freaking tabouli.