I'm very happy to announce that Baby Bug arrived on August 5th!
My office held a surprise party for me on July 30th with cake and a very generous gift. Baby gave me a bit of a scare when the sugar from the cake didn't cause more vigorous movement, and I called my OB's office. Since my doctor was on vacation they advised me to go to Labor & Delivery for a biophysical profile. Of course the baby was just fine and started moving as soon as they got the monitors hooked up! They realized when doing my discharge paperwork that they hadn't gotten my blood pressure and when they took it, it was 150/98. Needless to say, that got their attention. My BP only went down when I was laying on my side, they drew a lot of blood, and finally the on-call doctor from my OB's group decided that I could go home on strict bed rest until I could be seen by my doctor (the alternative was admitting me for the weekend!). I had an appointment scheduled for Tuesday which was canceled because my OB had an emergency, so I was stuck on bed rest from Friday afternoon until Wednesday morning.
I went in to my appointment on the 4th, my diastolic was still in the high 90s, and my lab work came back - all of which confirmed that I had developed preeclampsia. Fortunately Baby Bug was doing beautifully in there. Since I was 39 weeks and the baby was doing well my OB decided to induce that afternoon because the preeclampsia was only going to get worse until I delivered. He said the whole process would likely take 24-36 hours. I got Mr. Bug home from work and we got over to the hospital. They had to use Cervidil overnight and then Pitocin was started at around 4:30 AM (I was still only 1 cm dilated at that point). Unfortunately due to the preeclampsia, when the Pitocin started I had to go on magnesium sulfate and was stuck in bed for the duration - and that made the contractions really suck. To make a very long story short, I dilated far faster than anyone expected me to, and went from 1 cm to fully dilated in the course of about 5 hours. This was only determined when my nurse was holding me still for my epidural and realized I was pushing involuntarily, and she made the resident check me. Talk about a surprise for all parties involved! Fortunately my OB was at the hospital and he had finished a surgery unexpectedly early so he was there to deliver the baby. The downside was that my epidural never had a chance to work so I felt everything, but the upside was that I only pushed for 15 minutes.
Lily Karen arrived at 9:54 AM on August 5th, 6 pounds 14 ounces, and 19 inches long. Thankfully she was perfectly healthy through the whole induction and delivery, despite my medical complication. We were so happy and surprised to have a girl; both Mr. Bug and I had been thinking "boy" for quite a while by the time I delivered. She's a beautiful baby and we're just overjoyed to have her here with us.
I had to stay in bed for 24 hours after delivery on the mag sulfate. I really don't recommend it; the mag sulfate made my memory fuzzy and I had to have Mr. Bug or the nurses bring her to me when she needed to eat. I hated not being able to take care of my baby right away. But there was still a high seizure risk for me so the mag sulfate had to keep running to prevent that. My blood pressure was still very high when we were sent home 2 days later, so I had to have a followup check after a week. Fortunately my BP was down to 121/62 then, so my preeclampsia was deemed to have resolved and I didn't need to go on blood pressure medication. In retrospect I think Lily really did me a favor by having a lazy day and prompting that trip to L&D; at least I was on bedrest for the 5 days prior to my induction which probably helped her stay so healthy and kept my preeclampsia from getting much worse.
Mr. Bug had to go back to work after a week, but Lily is a good sleeper and a good eater so it hasn't been too tough. I recovered very quickly from delivery and now there's just some sleep deprivation since I'm her sole source of nutrition. Mr. Bug is a great dad and we're having a lot of fun with her. I'll go back to work the week of October 18th, and I'm both really looking forward to getting back to my job and worrying about leaving her in daycare (even though we found a great center for her).
