Little Man was born one week ago, at 39 weeks, due to pre-eclampsia. It started as a normal week. On Thursday the 25th, we had a doctor’s appointment and found that my blood pressure was still high. They did an ultrasound to check on him and had me do blood work to check for pre-eclampsia. I was also sent home to do a 24-hour urine collection and was told to go to Labor & Delivery on Saturday morning for an NST and to have them check my urine.

So, my husband and I went to Labor & Delivery at 10 am on Saturday morning. Because of COVID, my husband couldn’t come to triage with me and had to wait in the waiting room. I was attached to the NST machine for a half-hour. During that time, the baby’s heart rate and my blood pressure were normal. They still hadn’t run my urine test but they believed that it would come back normal so they sent me home to wait for the results. However, two hours after returning home, we were called and told that the protein in my urine was elevated and they wanted to induce me that night at 7.

At 7 pm, we brought our bags and went to Labor & Delivery. I was hooked up to fetal monitoring and had Cervadil placed. We were told that the Cervadil would work overnight to dilate my cervix and then they would start a Pitocin IV the next day. By midnight, I was two centimeters dilated and my water broke. My contractions were coming a couple of minutes apart. By 4 am, I was 6 centimeters and I had asked for the epidural. My mom arrived at 4:30 since I was already at 7 centimeters. By mid-morning, I was 10 centimeters and ready to push. The room swarmed with activity and within a half-hour, little man was born.

I was able to get some skin-on-skin bonding time with him after he was born while I was stitched up from the episiotomy and while we waited for the placenta. However, after 40 minutes, the placenta was still not coming, even after the OB tried to manually go in and pull it out which was painful even with the epidural. I was going to have to go into the OR to have the placenta manually removed. My mom and husband both stayed with the Little Man while I went alone. I was terrified since they were also doing a D&C to make sure they got all of the placenta. It was so close to the year anniversary of losing Bean and having that D&C that I was terrified. I was exhausted and my hormones were all over the place. I was awake the whole procedure and was numb as they removed the placenta.

At the end of the surgery, as they were pulling my legs back down and finishing up, I started to feel very nauseous. I started to feel worse and worse. A nurse held a bucket next to me and waved an alcohol pad in front of my nose to curb the nausea. After a couple of minutes, I was exhausted and couldn’t keep my eyes open. They moved me back onto the hospital bed and brought me back to my room. I could barely keep my eyes open but I desperately wanted to hold my son and try to breastfeed him. It took almost a half-hour for me to feel strong enough and to stop shaking, but finally, I was able to hold my son.