Birth Story, Part 1

The story begins on Friday, September 24th. We went in for a routine Dr's appointment in the afternoon. They checked my blood pressure at the Dr's office and it was 144/90. My blood pressure had been pretty routinely ~110/80 so this increase was concerning.

They let me sit and relax for a few minutes then checked it again... about the same result.

Since I'm Type 1 Diabetic, I knew I was at about a 40% chance of getting preeclampsia. I didn't have any protein in my urine, so the Dr sent me home for the weekend with strict instructions to call if I had any headaches, blurry vision, other changes in vision, stomach pain, etc... and wanted to see us again on Monday morning.

On Monday we went back to the office and had the same high blood pressure. I still didn't have protein in my urine, which was a good thing. I was only ~36 1/2 weeks so the Dr wanted to see me try to get to 37 weeks.

I thought we were about to get to go home again until I mentioned that my blood sugars had been a little strange over the past couple of days. I told the Dr that my insulin requirements were going down and had to reduce my overall insulin by ~10% so I didn't go hypoglycemic.

At this comment, my Dr got a very serious look on her face. She is typically very calm and level headed and this is the first time I saw her unnerved. Bryce noticed it too and this was when we knew something wasn't right.

The Dr thought about it for a minute, then excused herself from the room briefly. She came back and said she wanted to discuss this with another high risk ObGyn and they confirmed that I needed to be hospitalized. The concern was 1) preeclampsia and 2) concerns about the effectiveness of the placenta from my comments about my insulin.

She told us to go home and pack a bag and come back the hospital where I would be monitored for 24-36 hrs.

After lunch, we got back to the hospital and started the monitoring. I had to do a 24 hour urine collection as well as monitor my blood pressure every 2 hours. We basically sat in the hospital and watched TV for 36 hours. After the monitoring was over, we got to go home Tuesday night since my blood pressures had stabilized (still high but not increasing). I was to be on bed rest until our induction date the following week.

Wednesday morning we went back to the Dr (again). The results of my 24 urine collection were in and they confirmed preeclampsia. Since I still hadn't reached 37 weeks and my blood pressure was stabilized, they moved my induction date up 2 days and sent me home on bed rest with another appointment on Friday.

More to come in Part 2... :)