So how did it all start...? Do I really want to remember? There is a lot I have blocked out but if I think about it I can remember those first 10 nightmarish months.
Around the third trimester I was riding high. Passed my pharmacy boards. Excited to be pregnant during the holidays. Super excited to get to see my baby in February. Around my shower, just a week or so before Thanksgiving, this momma wasn't feeling so hot. My shoes wouldn't fit. I got tired super quick. I felt like a water balloon. I told myself this was normal. My doctors didn't seem concerned. I plugged along, volunteered at our local charitable pharmacy and ignored my body screaming at me to slow down. At work my legs would swell so much I would have to leave. But this is all normal?!? I gained 7# in the first 22 weeks or so of pregnancy. Then I started to gain weight crazy fast. I wasn't eating a lot but I was drinking a ton!!! And peeing very little although running to the bathroom every 10 minutes. Around Christmas I noticed my hands and face would go completely numb and on a lark I decided to take my blood pressure. Wouldn't you have guessed it the cuff read 200/100. AMAZING. I rapidly declined over the following two weeks. At Christmas I cried and begged to go home, as we were out of town. My pressures were staying up for longer periods of time and I knew something was very wrong when me pee started foaming on Christmas Eve.
After an admission, being sent home, then coming right back to the hospital the next day E.R.C was born at 33 weeks via c-sections because momma had got the pre-e. We were lucky to get it in time because HELLP syndrome was about to happen. And that my friend is a very, very bad thing. Lucky for me and Miss E we got the steroids in before the crash c-section. Baby come out breathing on her own. Momma was in the magnisum haze. All was ok?!?
I had a rough go in the hospital. Being drugged out of your mind with completely uncontrolled blood pressures while trying to pump for a premature infant was difficult. But NOTHING was going to keep me from providing the natural goodness of breastmilk to my child. NOTHING. I got through it. My milk came in and she got all that hard work in her belly... through a feeding tube. OH SO NATURAL. The NICU staff still amped up the calories with fortifier. Which I didn't realize until two weeks into our stay. I wasn't happy with the fact she was receiving processed formula. But she was growing, yet still not wanting to breastfeed. Plus most of her diet was my BM.
Over the three week stay I became increasingly frustrated. I watched smaller babies breastfeed like champs and go home quickly. Here I was still struggling getting my little one to breast. Finally we decided to give her a bottle. It was "easier" She took to it well the first day. Then she stopped finishing the bottles. I was convinced it was the nursing staff. I was super mom! I could get her to eat! I wanted out!!! And so I did. I pumped, never slept and fed our LO at every feed. Every poky, labor intensive feed. I would stare at the clock because she had to do it within 20 minutes. Being constantly on edge about your child eating is a curse of the NICU. They do it to everyone, even those who are feeding well. All the nurses and doctors kept telling me "It will click. It always does. You will be amazed." But the day of D/C I knew it wasn't clicking and the crazy amount of work I put into feeding her I hid from the staff because I wanted to go home!!!
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