32 1/2 Weeks

Today I am 32 1/2 weeks pregnant. I couldn't tell you how many times I've said that number in the last 2 years. Many times at doctors appointments, many times to friends, family and people we meet. This is the day of my last pregnancy when little Kaelyn joined our family. As I've been getting closer and closer to this day, I've reflected a lot on that day just over 2 years ago, June 13th, 2009. The night before my best friend Jamie and her husband were staying at our house. We had dinner and for dessert we dipped about everything we could think of in melted chocolate. Then we played a crazy ping pong game where you would hit the ball and then run to the other side of the table to hit the next shot. It was fun and quite wild.

On Saturday morning I woke up with an excruciating pain in my abdomen. It really was one of the most painful things I've ever experienced. I figured it was from all the chocolate dipped junk I had eaten the night before. So I got up and took a bath hoping that would ease the pain. It didn't, it just got worse and worse. Wayne wanted to go to the hospital, but I fought him on it. I didn't want to go to the hospital for a stomachache. So we called Grandma Ruth, she is the family nurse and I knew that she would know what to do. She told us to go straight to the hospital, so we did. We also called my cousin Kristen, the other family nurse, who told us she would meet us at the hospital. Wayne got us there in record time as I just kept repeating over and over, "It hurts so bad." I literally felt like there was poison running through my body.

When we got to the hospital we went up to labor and delivery, they have a little emergency triage. We told them everything that had been going on and they ran a few tests. They could tell I was in a lot of pain, so they tried giving me a GI cocktail, a bunch of medicine that would quickly alleviate heart burn, if that was what it was. I knew it wasn't heart burn because a few days prior I had my first and only bout with it, and this was nothing like that. The cocktail did nothing so they gave me a dose of morphine and that made it bearable. They checked my blood pressure and took some labs and discovered that I had pre-eclampsia and that it had moved onto it's more serious form, HELLP. From what I understand my organs were beginning to shut down. It wasn't until after Kaelyn was born, that we realized how sick I really was, and that it was pretty serious. They did an ultrasound of Kaelyn and she was not doing well. Before then we had been getting weekly ultrasounds and they score they them based on a few different things. Even though she was not growing well, she would always pass the tests they did. This time she didn't pass. She was barely moving.

So within about an hour we had talked to a few doctors, one being the Attending over the NICU. He was very re-assuring and told us that nothing told him that our little girl couldn't survive and that they were going to do everything they could to keep her alive. The only way to treat HELLP is is deliver the baby, so they set up for an emergency c-section. I still remember laying in the bed after my second dose of morphine and just feeling almost like I was having an out of body experience. I went from feeling so much pain, not to mention the emotional pain we had been going through the prior 12 1/2 weeks wondering if our little girl would live to be born. It literally felt like I was floating, and I just felt at peace.

After they took me back to the OR, and gave me a spinal tap, Kaelyn was born within about 6 minutes. We didn't even realize she was out and passed through the window to the NICU until she was gone. They did tell us that she was breathing on her own, and just requiring some oxygen. Our little girl came into this world at 1 lb 11 oz. She fought for 32 1/2 weeks to survive in an environment that just wasn't giving her the nutrition she needed to thrive. I am so proud of her for sticking in through that, and am so blessed to be her mother.

At our appointment on the Thursday before Kaelyn was born we had decided with our doctor that we would come back in on Monday and deliver her via c-section then. She just wasn't growing and had reached the point where she would do better on the outside than in utero. The way Wayne and I look at it is, if I hadn't gotten sick, she wouldn't have made it through the weekend. She needed to be delivered then. Heavenly Father took matters into his own hands and orchestrated everything so she would live. Throughout my whole pregnancy I had been quite healthy, and had never shown any signs of pre-eclampsia or high blood pressure. It literally came on over night.

Since Kaelyn was so small, they had to do a classical c-section, where they cut the uterus up and down, rather than horizontal, like they usually do. So with this pregnancy and all following pregnancies I will have to have scheduled c-sections at around 36 weeks, because they don't want you to labor at all when you've had a classical c-section. I knew that, but I never really knew why until my appointment yesterday. My doctor explained that if I was to labor I am at risk for the scar could rupture and I could bleed internally, or the baby could come out through it and the placenta would be compromised, so it would put both me and the babies life at risk. I'm not going to lie, missing out on the final month of pregnancy doesn't sound too bad, but now that I know why I'm even more grateful for it.

So here I am at 32 1/2 weeks, with 4 weeks to go! I can't believe we are coming to the end of this pregnancy and getting ready for the arrival of our second little girl! With how low key its been this time around, it really has gone by fast for me. I've felt great throughout the whole thing. Let me tell you this nesting business has kicked in on over-drive this time around. I didn't really get to that point when I was pregnant with Kaelyn. We didn't even know if we would be able to bring her home, so I didn't feel like I needed to get anything ready. Well this time I've had Wayne painting our other bedroom my favorite color and his next project is to put up bead board and put together Kaelyn's new bedroom set, so we can move her in there and then re-distribute the baby clothes into the nursery. I've also decided to organize and purge the basement and get new carpet throughout the whole house. So yea, we have quite a bit to get done in the next 4 weeks, but I figure I've got to use this ambition while I've got it ;)