On Preeclampsia

I promised a post on preeclampsia...so here it is.

While I was having a lot of trouble accepting it at the time because it happened so suddenly, I can fully appreciate now that I probably had preeclampsia.  If I did not, I would have before I hit 40 weeks and a homebirth was unfortunately never going to happen for me and I was never going to stay pregnant until my due date.

As I stated many times, preeclampsia is actually pretty scary and it is best monitored by giving birth in a hospital.

I accept this.

No one knows exactly what causes preeclamsia and no one knows exactly why some women get it and not others.  But it is theorized that it is a disease of the placenta.  The placenta has a finite life anyway and begins to break down and stop working at 42 weeks, this is why everyone gets concerned if you haven't delivered by 42 weeks, but it seems in preeclampsia the placenta starts to break down earlier than it should.

I was asymptomatic in that I did not have the swelling, visual disturbances, headaches or excessive weight gain.

But I had some of the more important ones of high blood pressure, an easy induction and a baby that wasn't growing anymore.

Yeah, baby wasn't growing anymore.

If you remember, baby was measuring roughly 5.5 lbs. at 34 weeks and about 6 lbs at 36 weeks.  Baby came out at 38 weeks at 6 lbs, beefed up a bit by the IV fluids, which means he wasn't REALLY 6 lbs.  Poor baby really hadn't grown much since 34 weeks.  Yeah, I had a little belly, and a little baby in it.

This part makes me sad.  My baby being born so small makes me sad.  He's growing now and was already back to his birth weight at 6 days old, but man those were a rough few days when he was losing weight.

I'm disappointed in my placenta and the fact that it quit working.  BAD BAD PLACENTA!  (And no I did no encaspsulate or make art out of my placenta...I am angry with my placenta, it does not deserve to have art made out of it, future post on this to come.)

So yes, I had preeclampsia and I needed to have my baby in the hospital just in case something went wrong.

This isn't the part of my story that makes me angry.

The diagnosis does not make me angry.

Ok I am angry about my diagnosis, but that's my placenta's fault not the hospitals.

I am angry with the hospital because of the cookie cutter way in which they treated the diagnosis of preeclampsia.

Is all they saw was a woman showing signs of preeclampsia who was 38 weeks pregnant, full term in their eyes.  And as far as they were concerned I needed to deliver that baby right then and there, not 2 days from then, not 12 hours from then, right then.

They could see no reason to compromise.  No benefit to staying pregnant even a day longer.

What they couldn't comprehend was that just the day before I was all set to have a homebirth.  In one day I went from planning a peaceful homebirth to OMG YOU HAVE PREECLAMPSIA YOU HAVE TO BE INDUCED AND GET THAT BABY OUT NOW!

They could not accept that I was not trying to put me or my baby at risk by refusing an immediate induction but that I needed ONE night to both change gears and accept what was happening mentally AND GET SOME FUCKING SLEEP so that I could come to the hospital refreshed and ready to have a baby, not so exhausted that I don't know how I even found the energy to do what I did.

I had even signed all the leaving Against Medical Advice paperwork that they shoved in my face so I could not sue them should I start seizing in those 12 hours that I was away from the hospital.  But they couldn't let it go.

And the fuckers bullied me into that induction by calling me an hour after I left to tell me my bloodwork was changing.  Had I not been so exhausted, had I not already been fighting them for 2 days, had I just been in a better place mentally I would have questions WHAT was changing and what it meant.

But I was tired of fighting and I gave in.

In the end, once all the results from the bloodwork and the 24-hour urine test came back THAT THEY WERE SO WEIRD ABOUT LETTING ME FINISH after I'd had the baby it was determined that YES, blood work was changing heading in the direction of preeclampsia, BUT STILL IN THE NORMAL RANGE.  And the urine????  Came back normal.  

MOTHERFUCKERS.

When all was said and done everyone conceded that YES, THEY DEFINITELY COULD HAVE LET ME WAIT 12 HOURS FOR THE INDUCTION, probably even a few days if I had daily monitoring!

And that, my friends, is why I desperately tried to stay out of the hospital system while I was pregnant.  Why I so desperately wanted a homebirth.  Why I was so upset with the way the induction was handled.

Everyone says that once you have the baby it doesn't matter how he came into the world because you got a healthy baby in the end.

I disagree.

Maybe I'll change my mind in the future, but for now...it still matters and I'm still pissed.

To me, they took something away from me unnecessarily by refusing to match specific circumstances to a recommended course of action.  When I pulled that baby out of me, so numb that if felt like I was pulling a baby out of someone else's body, I did not cry with pure joy or feel this overwhelming gush of love for this little thing on my chest.  I cried in relief.  Relief that it was over and that soon I'd be able to feel my legs again and I could get out of that fucking hospital.  

It took me a few days at home with baby to actually feel any sort of real emotion when I looked at him.  People say they look at their babies and wonder how they could ever love anything more and that the feeling needs a new name because love isn't strong enough, blah blah blah...I felt none of that.

Just relief.

And I felt awful because I know so many women who've had much more traumatic deliveries (3rd & 4th degree tears!  forceps!  C-sections!) and THEY were able to say that all the pain in the world was worth it just to see their babies for the first time.  And here I was with my perfectly intact perineum, no trauma whatsoever, and I couldn't, and still can't, make that statement.

With time I hope this feeling passes and that I will be able to look back on Baby Jett's birth story with better feelings than anger and sadness...but for now it is what it is.

The hospital, once again, has proven to me that it is the worst place in the world for women to be having babies under normal circumstances...and that even under abnormal circumstances like preeclampsia I wish there were other options.

Hopefully if we can manage to get pregnant again in the future we can stay far far away from the hospital and get our homebirth that we're still longing for.  And please god let me not end up preeclamptic again!