welcome to the world Mason Joseph!

And I'm back...It's been one hell of a week, that's for sure. It's hard to believe I've been a mom for a whole week already!  We just love our little boy and fall more and more in love with him everyday!

I also wanted to document our birth story...this is going to be a long post and some of it might be TMI but I don't want to forget the details.  So here it goes...I had my weekly checkup on Friday, Sept 23rd and my blood pressure was quite high, nearing 160. My doctor had been monitoring it for a few weeks now and decided it was time to try mediation to help bring it down. I also had to do another 24 hour urine collection over the weekend and she wanted to see me on Monday, Sept 26 again to check how the medicine was working. Monday morning came and I was preparing myself for bedrest, so I had Joe come along this time, just in case. It ended up being a good thing he was there, my doctor walked in and the literally the first thing she said to us was "Your protein spiked, you are having a baby today." Basically, I had developed preeclampsia and we couldn't wait without big risks for me and the baby. The normal range for protein levels is 0.00-0.29, mine had spiked to 3.67. She checked my cervix and it thankfully it had progressed rapidly from Friday. I went from 25% effaced, 0cm dilated to 50% effaced and 2cm dilated in only 3 days...I think my body knew this little boy needed to get out. We sat there in complete shock, we couldn't believe it and absolutely not prepared to be heading to L&D that morning...my doctor called the hospital to get things rolling and we made some calls to our family, went home, finished packing and headed to the hospital.

We got there at 10:25am and checked in. They started the IV, magnesium sulfate (to prevent seizures which is common with pre-e) and pitocin (to induce labor) at 11:25am. My doctor arrived at 1:43pm to break my water and I was about 3.5 cm dilated. At 4:24pm, I had progressed to 4 cm and couldn't take the pain and requested an epidural, which was given at 4:45pm by the head of anesthesiology so I knew it would be a good one (and it was best decision I've made in a LONG time!). Things were great from there, I couldn't feel the contractions anymore and we just watched movies and relaxed. At 5:37pm, a catheter and a baby monitor attached to baby's head was put in. When I got close to 9 cm, which was around 10:30pm, I started to feel the contractions again and they hurt but were manageable...they only required me to close my eyes and breathe at that point (similar to moderate menstrual cramping) and nothing like I'd imagine they'd feel without the pain meds. I was fully dilated by 11:30pm and after a little over an hour of pushing, Mason Joseph was born at 12:39am on Tuesday, September 27th.

The whole delivery process was nothing like I'd pictured it to be...I guess my only experience is what I've seen on the television and now realize how wrong they portray the whole process. I was very surprised how little time the doctor actually spends with you. She arrived to break my water and then headed back to clinic for the afternoon. And she arrived at the hospital around 10:30pm and popped in to say hello but didn't stay in the room with me until his head was crowning and I was ready to push Mason out. I was also shocked that during the hour of pushing, the only two people in the room was a L&D nurse and Joe. They were the 2 people who helped me with the pushing during each contraction. Joe wasn't planning on watching this part of the process but really didn't have a choice!


Since I was on so many different medications, along with having pre-e, the result ended up causing some complications after Mason was born. After the delivery, my doctor then started to firm up my uterus (by pushing down on my stomach) and was having trouble. After many "massages"(I put it in quotations because there is nothing relaxing about these massages) she was able to finally slow the bleeding and get it to firm up. She left the room after she thought I was stable but was to be paged immediately if things turned. The nurses continued to "massage" but my uterus just continued to soften and I started hemorrhaging heavily again and had multiple blood clots the size of a softball. My doctor was called back in at about 1:30am. She tried pushing down again to firm things up but wasn't successful...and so we needed to progress to more drastic measures to get the clots out. She is not a OBGYN (she's family medicine with an emphasis in OB), so she had to call in the on-call OBGYN to assist with the process. The anesthesiologist was also called back to administer another epidural since the manual extraction of the clots was going to be extremely painful. My blood pressure also started to swing drastically...it dropped to 60/45 so they gave me medication to bring it back up. Then it spiked to 221/215 so they had to give meds to bring it back down.

During this time, the lab tech was also trying to draw some blood (they wanted to see how much I had lost) but she was having a very hard time getting anything to draw since I had lost so much already. After 3 attempts, she handed it over to the anesthesiologist to try. He was successful in finally getting blood and was then ready to start the epidural (he couldn't start it before the blood was drawn). However, we had run out of time...my body was going crazy and my life was in serious danger.  The OBGYN wasn't in yet and the epidural would take 5-10 minutes to fully kick in...but I was hemorrhaging too much blood and with my blood pressure out of control...she couldn't wait...she had to manually find and pull the blood clots from my uterus.

So much for my pain-free birth, huh? This was the most painful thing I have ever been through and I'm guessing more painful than natural childbirth...I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. I remember just crying in pain and begging her to stop...and my doctor apologizing over and over again. Once the epidural kicked in, it was a lot better and she was able to find the clot causing all the bleeding. Just as she was finishing up, the OBGYN arrived and made sure everything looked good and he stitched me up for the second time. I also had to have a blood transfusion and was given 2 bags of blood, since they estimate I had lost half of my blood.

I was awake and conscious during this whole process...I knew I was in bad shape but I think with the amount of blood I had lost, I didn't really grasp the severity until afterwords when Joe told me how much I bled and how the room looked like a murder scene. I remember praying for the bleeding to stop and for the solution to not be a hysterectomy. My poor husband was fully aware of what was happening and was praying for his wife to not die. During the worst of it, there were 13 people in that room, trying to save my life.

After the blood transfusion and the bleeding was under control, I had finally stabilized. This was around 5:30am and Joe was finally able to get away and check on Mason, who had been brought to the nursery since all the nurses in the room were focused on my situation. We were moved to a new room at 6:45am where I was put on bed rest for the next 24 hours.  I had machines on all 4 extremities. I was still hooked up to the IV, magnesium, and pitocin in one arm, had a blood pressure cuff on the other arm and had leg massagers on my calves to prevent blood clots since I couldn't get out of bed. We had our parents visit that day and were still on the adrenaline high of just having a baby, so we didn't get any real sleep until Tuesday evening (which means Joe was up for over 36 hours straight, I was able to get a few cat naps here and there).

The next few days were spent recovering and having more family visits. My health improved every day...I was able to finally get up and walk around on Wednesday morning and take a shower...never felt so good! I was off the magnesium, which makes you feel like you have the flu, and I felt like a new woman. On Wednesday night, they started to test Mason for jaundice...his levels were slowly starting to rise, so we bumped up our feedings to help pass the bilirubin. Since my milk was not in yet, we had to supplement with formula. By Thursday, he was in the moderate to high risk level, so we were not released on Thursday like we had hoped. By Friday, his numbers had leveled off but since he was still at risk, they sent us home with blanket with lights that we had to keep on him over the weekend, except for feedings. On Saturday afternoon, my milk finally arrived and we've been able to avoid formula since.

Yesterday, we had our first weigh in and checkup with our doctor, we go again on Friday to make sure things are still progressing well...his levels were down enough to remove the blanket, YES!  Then we had an in-home nurse come today to check in on everything and his weight is back up to 5 lbs 5 ozs so he is on track to being back at this birth weight by 2 weeks! And my blood pressure is back down to 116/80...so we both are doing very well now!

The past week was definitely NOT what I had imagined it would be...although you never really think these things can happen to you. But it is what it is...and all that really matters is that we all made it through the experience, healthy and happy on the other side. And we have the most beautiful baby in the world that I am just head over heels in love with...and to have a healthy baby boy at the end of it all, I would go through all the pain and suffering all over again.

Welcome to the world Mason Joseph...you are such a blessing and we love you so much!