Wednesday, July 29, 2009
July 29, 2009
Brianna had another great night and is having a good day. I just got off the phone with her nurse and they just finished rounds in the NICU. Brianna is still maintaining a great sugar level with no insulin. Her chest x-ray again this morning was great there is no air and no fluid noted on the chest x-ray. Today they are going to turn off the suction on her chest tube and see if things remain stable without the suction being on. If it goes well they are planning on removing her chest tube possibly tomorrow. Once the tube is removed they said I would be able to hold her! She is down a tiny bit of weight since yesterday by 1 and 1/2 ounces but they are actually happy about it she never did loose any weight after birth so this is exactly what they wanted to see happen...it scares me because she is so little but they said its a good thing so I'm going with the flow. She is also doing great with her urine output and pooping on a regular basis so they have decided to increase her feedings to 1 cc of breastmilk every 2 hrs instead of every 4 hrs. The nurse said she is very fiesty today and keeps trying to pull out her tube and they have to keep re-positioning her but it only lasts a few minutes before she is trying to remove something else....her nurse said she is a very stubborn determined little thing.......hmmm I guess some of my genes mixed in there somewhere! They are very happy that she is so active and said its a great sign of her strength. I can't wait for Brian to get home from work so we can go up and see her later.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
July 28, 2009 5:00pm
I just got a call from Brianna's nurse and they got the central line in!!!! I'm so happy they finally got it in...they also just took a picture for me little Brianna has opened her eyes!
July 28, 2009
Brianna is doing good she is a tiny little fighter! I just called the hospital and the nurse said she is a fiesty little girl and very strong. All the nurses love her because she is so spunky she takes after her mommy. It took them a long time to do her chest x-ray this morning because she didnt feel like sitting still. Today her weight is up to 1 lb 8 ounces!! Her chest x-ray was great and there were no signs of fluid or air on the left side so the new ventilator is working wonders. Her vent setting is down to 9 and she is using about 22 percent oxygen the nurses said this is amazing for a baby her size. She is no longer on insulin and is maintaining her own sugar levels. She is taking feedings like a champ. Today she was taken off the billy light as her jaundice is much better and she has her little glasses off. She still hasn't opened her eyes yet but they said she should very soon. Today they will try again to insert a central and arterial line she is bigger so they are hoping they can get it in now. They did some cultures on the puss that was coming out of the chest tube and all of those came back negative for infection. Thanks for all the prayers for our little Brianna they are being heard and answered! Brian and I will go back up to see her tonight when he gets out of work I can't wait to see her. I can't wait for the first time I get to hold her.
The day Brianna was born
I began to feel better and was holding down fluid and food so I went to work on July 15th and July 16th. I still had some swelling but elevated my legs as much as possible and went for a 1/2 hr walk each day while on my break at work. I thought all would be fine now and didn't think twice about anything and was just looking forward to my next OB appt the following week with my doctor. I went to bed as normal on July 16th and woke up around midnight in extreme pain in my chest. I thought I might be having a heartattack the pain was so intense. I tried pepto and it did nothing. I then began to feel like I was going to get sick to my stomach again and I did. I noticed in the mirror in the bathroom that my eyes looked like they were closing and like I had been punched in the face it was so puffy. My ankles were huge that night which I thought was odd as I had been sleeping and my swelling was usually during the day only. I then began to get an extreme pounding headache worse than any headache I had ever had before. I woke Brian up and told him something was seriously wrong and I was calling 911. I called for an ambulance and they took me to the ER (not without convincing them to take me they asked several times if I wanted Brian to take me but I said no I knew something was majorly wrong.) I arrived at the ER and sat there for almost 3 hrs before finally I was able to get them to give me some pain meds for the headache. They were giving me IV fluids and watching my blood pressure and the monitor kept going off as my blood pressure kept rising. The ER doctor asked me to go and give a urine sample and I immediately knew something was wrong my urine was the color of coffee it was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. I went back and layed down and the doctor ran in and said I was being admitted and I had preclampsia. The next thing I knew my feet were shaking and I wasn't moving them. The only thing I remember after that was my arms flarring in the air and calling for Brian who was standing on the other side of the room. When I woke up there were doctors standing over me putting oxygen on me and they were telling me I had just had a seizure. They explained that I had eclampsia and they needed to send me to a bigger hospital and deliver the baby to save me. I was transferred by ambulance to the hospital and they prepared me for an emergency c-section. They were able to give me 1 shot of steriods to try and mature Brianna's lungs but the protocol is 2 shots but there wasn't enough time. They had to do the surgery under general anesthesia due to my high blood pressure. During the surgery I developed HELLP syndrome which is elevated liver enzymes, high protein, and low blood platelets which clot the blood. I'm not exactly sure all the details of the syndrome but I know its serious and not a good thing. Brianna was born at 3:30pm on July 17, 2009 at 1 lb 2 ounces. It was explained to me that she should have been bigger but the preclampsia had gone undiagnosed so the blood pressure had affected the function of the placenta and thus created interuterine growth retardation making her smaller than she should have been. She had to be given CPR after birth and was placed on a ventilator. When I sort of woke up from surgery it was explained to me that I had the worse case of eclampsia and HELLP syndrome they have ever seen where the mother had lived. My blood pressure had gone up to 210 over 180 or something close to that and I was close to having a stroke during the surgery. The next few days I pretty much lived in a magnesium fog and don't really remember too much. I do remember that my legs and body was full of fluid that I couldn't physically walk for a day until the catheter began to drain some of the fluid....I have no idea how much fluid I got rid of I lost track around 16 liters. I was in the hospital for 5 days until my blood pressure stabilized on medicine and the fluid was on its way out. Right now I'm still waiting to feel normal again it takes 6 weeks for all the effects of preclampsia to go away. Each day is a little better.
July 14, 2009
On July 13, 2009 my husband Brian and I went out to eat after going to the store and registering for items on Brianna's baby shower registry. That evening around 10pm I began to have severe heartburn and figured it was from what I ate so I took some tums and tried to go back to sleep. At 2am I woke up and was extremely sick to my stomach and began to violently get sick to my stomach. I had never been so sick to my stomach in my life. It was constant with no relief and I couldn't hold down water or gatorade. I called my OB's office and they gave me an appt to go into the office that afternoon. Brian stayed home from work and took care of me and tried to keep pushing the fluids even though they were not staying down. My ankles were also swollen and the bags under my eyes were monster looking. I went to the OB's office and saw the Doctor covering for my OB as he was not in the office that day. As soon as I got into the waiting room I needed to use the restroom and got sick again. They called me in and weighed me and I told the nurse thats odd I was up 3 lbs from 2 days before she didn't seem to think it was an issue. She was about to take my blood pressure when I had to excuse myself and go get sick again in the restroom. I also had to take off my bra as I had so much pressure in my chest but thought it was because I had been getting sick so much. I went back into the exam room and she took my blood pressure and she commented that it was high compared to my previous checks. I told her my blood pressure has always been good actually the only comment I have ever gotten in the past re: my blood pressure was that it was perfect. She left the room and the OB came in and checked on the baby's heartbeat with the doppler and said she sounded great and her heartbeat was 155. She noted that I looked very sick and I told her I had never been so sick before. She re-took my blood pressure and said that it was a bit high. She asked me if my eyes always looked like that and I told her no. She asked what I had eaten and I told her we went out to eat. She thought i might have food poisioning. I asked her if she thought something was seriously wrong and she said no and the baby sounded great and not affected at all. She told me to go home and rest and drink as much water and gatorade as I could even if I was throwing it up and eventually I would begin to hold fluids down again and to call the next day if I was still sick.
When things began to change with my pregnancy
Although it took many years and several years of infertility treatment to conceive my daughter my pregnancy had been very easy. My biggest complaint over 25 weeks was that I felt normal and didn't feel pregnant. I didn't get morning sickness and it was hard to believe that I was finally pregnant I didn't really believe it until I could begin to feel Brianna move and kick. My doctors said to consider myself lucky but after all I had been through in 7 years I wanted a big belly and wanted to feel sick to my stomach. I could have done without the drama that was to come.
Around July 1, 2009 I began to have frequent heartburn and swelling in my ankles. I called my OB and spoke to my nurse who advised it was normal and told me to take tums or Pepcid for the heartburn and to elevate my legs as much as possible at night and to walk around frequently at work and not to sit at my desk too long. I did both of these things. About a week later a co-worker had noticed that I had puffy bags of fluid under my eyes and suggested I should call again to the OB and let them know I was still having swelling issues. I called my OB and spoke with my nurse and she said this was normal and keep doing what I'm doing and that this is the beginning part of the uncomfortable phase of the pregnancy. This was my first pregnancy so I thought she must be right and this is what I wished for to be uncomfortable and I was about to begin all the joys of the third trimester of pregnancy.
Around July 1, 2009 I began to have frequent heartburn and swelling in my ankles. I called my OB and spoke to my nurse who advised it was normal and told me to take tums or Pepcid for the heartburn and to elevate my legs as much as possible at night and to walk around frequently at work and not to sit at my desk too long. I did both of these things. About a week later a co-worker had noticed that I had puffy bags of fluid under my eyes and suggested I should call again to the OB and let them know I was still having swelling issues. I called my OB and spoke with my nurse and she said this was normal and keep doing what I'm doing and that this is the beginning part of the uncomfortable phase of the pregnancy. This was my first pregnancy so I thought she must be right and this is what I wished for to be uncomfortable and I was about to begin all the joys of the third trimester of pregnancy.
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