Most of you know, and if you don’t know I’ll tell you… I was gone for a little over 2 months on maternity leave. Aside from photos of my baby (isn’t she adorable??) on Facebook and Instagram, things around ANP have been quiet… too quiet. I never got an opportunity to tell my birth story so I thought it’d be a great way to kick off my new blog and let everyone know I’m back. Most of the time when someone asks about my birth story I give them the short version… This is not that version…

Saturday, May 23rd, at about 10 p.m. I started having lower chest / upper abdominal pain. I tried ignoring the pain and went to sleep but was awoke several times. Finally at about 330 in the morning I got up and called my midwife and she recommended that I go to the emergency room. Six hours later the diagnosis was considered inconclusive with a possibility of gallbladder inflammation. The doctor recommended that I stay away from fatty foods for the next week to help clear up any colic that may exist in the gallbladder. They mentioned very briefly the possibility of a condition called HELLP syndrome, a severe and rare cousin to preeclempsia, but were not seriously considering it as a diagnosis considering less than 1% of pregnant women are diagnosed with it.

Wednesday morning I had an appointment with the midwife. We went over all the normal things and we discussed my emergency room trip in which she supports the possibility of gallbladder issues and briefly touched on HELLP syndrome since she noticed elevated liver counts and low blood platelet counts in my labs. She too stated how rare HELLP syndrome is and how unlikely it would be to be the cause of my pain. That being said, I was instructed to come in at the first sign of upper abdominal pain like I was having the past weekend.

Wednesday night 9:30 p.m. the pain returns. I take it easy and see if it resolves itself but at 1130 decide it’s time to call the midwife. An ER trip follows where I received the official diagnosis of HELLP syndrome. I went from a low risk pregnancy where I didn’t even get morning sickness to a high risk patient in the matter of minutes. The decision was to induce labor to prevent any issues such as seizures, liver rupture, and a whole bunch of other scary things. The doctors were adamant about getting the baby out as fast as possible and early on wanted to deliver via C-Section. I did my best to advocate for a natural delivery and so thus we went forward with *somewhat* my plan.

At this point I was only one centimeter dilated and 50% effaced as I had been for several days. Pitocin was started at around 230 in the morning of Thursday, May 28, and was ran for 27 hours with only a brief gap to receive Cytotec (a pill inserted to help ripen the cervix) since my cervix wasn’t going anywhere even though my contractions were through the roof. During this period I was given 1 or 2 doses of a light pain medication so I could attempt some sleep in preparation for the real work. Let’s be real though… No sleep happened and that pain medication only lasted for 20 minutes.

At 330 in the morning on May 29th I started feeling really strong contractions that were 2 minutes in length and two and a half minutes apart. This consistency lasted for 3 hours when I was checked again I was only two and a half centimeters and 80 percent effaced. By this point, the contractions were extremely intense and I was told I would be denied an epidural since my blood platelet count was too low (although going epidural-less was part of the plan anyway so it wasn’t a huge deal). I decided to get in the laboring tub to help with pain at around 6 a.m. The warmth helped at first and brought my contractions’ pain level of 7 or so to about a 4. I spent an hour in the tub where my contractions were steadily increasing in length and intensity. I even accidentally bumped my IV site causing it to bleed severely and the nurse had to remove the line. I had to get out of the tub so they could place a new IV at which time they checked my cervix again and found that I was between 6 & 7 centimeters and fully effaced and it appeared as if my bag had ruptured while I was in the tub. Talk about escalation!

A new IV was placed and the nurse had me get on hands and knees with a ball for support an attempt to turn the baby. Fast forward about 4 or 5 contractions and I was fully dilated and ready to push. I pushed for a total of 37 minutes and my baby girl was born. Active labor (from 4 cm to delivery) was estimated to be about an hour and a half. And there you have it! It was a rough start with a beautiful finish! And ever since I’ve been spending my days snuggling a sweet baby and *trying* to get back into a routine! More posts to follow about post-birth shenanigans!

Since everything was so slow to kick off we held off on calling our birth photographer. Unfortunately since everything escalated so quickly once I hit active labor she didn’t make it in time to photograph the actual birth but we still have wonderful photographs to cherish of the moments immediately following the birth. Here are some of my favorite captures by Keren Fenton at The Birth Photographer.

