on Oct 10th, 2007The Hospital Visits
At my last appointment with my midwife, I was told that I have preeclampsia, a condition only present during pregnancy in which high blood pressure can be harmful to the mother and baby. Because of the possibility that the baby could be forced to come much earlier than expected, I was sent to the hospital to have a series of steroid shots to help develop the baby’s lungs in the event that an emergency arises and he needs to be born prematurely.
The first shot was administered on a Wednesday and the second was just 24 hours later. The night that I had the second shot I only slept for 1.5 hours total because I had some really bad chest pains that I attributed to severe heartburn. I called my midwife the next morning to ask about what I could take for heartburn. That afternoon I found myself in Labour & Delivery [L&D] with severe abdominal pain that wasn’t relieved by any OTC medication. After a few hours of being monitored, I was given a shot of morphine which helped some and then I was sent home.
The next morning brought on even more pain and it had spread to just about every part of my abdomen and was intolerable. I returned to L&D and was eventually sent to the Emergency Room [ER] where I had a slew of tests done to determine what was going on.
In all, I made three hospital trips for this horrendous pain and was eventually sent home with 5 prescriptions and a diagnosis of Gastritis. Three days of antiobiotics later, I was feeling up to par again and now I’m totally fine. That pain wasn’t as bad as the ovarian cyst I got to contend with in my first trimester but it was still worse than delivering Audrey. I’m not sure how much pain I want to endure with this birth after such an eventful pregnancy. On the one hand, I want to go the natural route and the waterbirth. But there’s a voice in the back of my head that just keeps saying, “WHY!?! Get the epidural and be done with it!!”