I enjoyed pregnancy. However, like a lot of pregnant mommas in 2020, the pandemic changed how I imagined my pregnancy was going to be. We had to cancel our gender reveal, doctor’s visits became mother only, and I found myself spending my pregnancy more alone than I had ever planned. Don’t get me wrong, I was no less thankful to be pregnant while sitting at home, but I found myself feeling disappointed on all the things I thought “would be” with this pregnancy. Luke’s birth proved to be no different. I was nervous about giving birth but still had a certain picture in my head of what birth should look like and having him nine weeks early was not in that picture.
I was 31 weeks pregnant and had been to my last monthly doctor’s appointment where everything with mom and baby looked great. I had been struggling with indigestion and some swelling, but I thought everyone struggled with these things the more pregnant they got and the doctor saw no sign for concern. This indigestion pain had been building for a couple weeks and two days after my routine check up it felt like I had just hit my limit with it. I hesitantly called the on-call doctor late Friday evening and explained what had been going on and she very calmly asked me to come in just to check everything out.
We got to the hospital around 11pm and due to Covid regulations Daniel wasn’t allowed to come back with me. My triage nurse was so sweet and did everything she could to calm my nerves and make me feel comfortable in that setting. They set me up to monitor the baby and started with all my basic vital checks. I recorded his little heart beat thinking it would be another few weeks before I got to hear it again. My sweet nurse took my blood pressure and then immediately rechecked. My blood pressure was dangerously high. They grabbed the doctor and despite the covid rules they asked someone to go get Daniel so the doctor could talk to us both. Before it was even said we both knew our baby would be coming, that night.
There was very little time for panic, which was probably best for me. They quickly started me on magnesium to lower my blood pressure and started prepping me for an emergency c-section as a doctor talked through the details with us. Daniel told me he loved me and gave me a kiss and I was off to the OR. I vividly remember someone calling out a checklist of items and various people responding as I lied on the table waiting for surgery to begin. They walked me through what the sedation and intubation process would be like and before I knew it, I was falling asleep.
Our boy was brought into this world at 2:14am weighing only 2 pounds 8 oz. Daniel was able to follow him immediately to the NICU and spent a short time with him before meeting me in recovery. I had handled surgery relatively well, and Luke was doing well for being so early but the hardest parts were yet to come for our new family of three.
