Eloise was born at 24 weeks and 5 days. I had a very normal pregnancy
until week 23. Friday, March 25th, I woke up very early, around 3am,
and felt something was wrong. I quickly found I was bleeding and got
very scared. My husband was out of town on a church retreat so I was
home alone. So, I called my parents who called an ambulance. I was
rushed to the hospital. My husband was finally located and rushed back
to to town by a friend.
The doctors found that my normally low blood pressure had
sky rocketed so I was kept Friday night for observation. I also
received a steroid shot so that Eloise could develop a little faster
since the doctors felt she would come early. Saturday afternoon I was
sent home with blood pressure medicine and put on bed rest. Early
Monday morning I woke up again with back pain; not an incredibly unusual
thing. Unable to sleep I went to the living room and took some
Tylenol. Within an hour, I had a horrible headache and decided to wake
my husband up and head back to the hospital.
My blood pressure was once again very high. I was diagnosed
with preeclampsia in the 2nd trimester. The decision was made to
transfer me to another hospital that specialized in high risk
pregnancies. When I arrived, I was immediately placed on magnesium and
more blood pressure medicine. We were told I would be here for the
duration of the pregnancy which hopefully would be a few weeks. My
husband stayed all that week until Thursday when I insisted he go to
work. Thursday afternoon, I was sitting in the hospital bed visiting
with my parents and my pastor when the doctor came in. She explained my
blood work that morning didn’t look good. My liver was having issues
from the blood pressure which was staying around 170 though had been
around 200. The pregnancy would likely only be a few more days or, at
worse, hours. My husband was immediately called back to my side.
Late Thursday night, I was about to take my evening medicine
and my husband was getting into bed. The nurse had left for a moment
and I stated the room just spun around. My husband asked lots of
questions but I couldn’t really give him an answer. He told the nurse
this when she returned. Within minutes, I went into a seizure. My
husband was taken out of the room while nurses and doctors worked on me;
shortly after I went into a second seizure. The pregnancy was now too
dangerous to continue and an emergency c-section had to occur.
I was wheeled into an operating room, unaware of what was
going on. I delivered my baby girl at 1:27am Friday morning… just one
week after any signs of preeclampsia and hours after eeclampsia. I was
the first person in my family to have preeclampsia. We have no history
of high blood pressure, diabetes, or seizures. There was no way to know
what was going to happen.
In early July I received a call from my OB/GYN who wanted me to come
and do a full blood work up. 2 weeks later they called back and told me
that something was wrong and I was to go see a specialist who could
tell me what was happening. It was discovered that some of my genes
were not normal. Recently connections have been shown between this
particular abnormality and difficult pregnancy, in particular, eclamptic
pregnancies. So Eloise will likely be our last but our perfect little
princess. We were so thankful not to know about the gene before,
otherwise we wouldn't have tried to get pregnant in the first place.
After 115 days in the NICU we were told our little girl was
finally able to come home. We were thrilled and terrified all at once.
We were able to stay our first night with her in the hospital.The next
day, we packed up our home for the past few months (at the Ronald
McDonald House) and drove home…. This time with our little Eloise.
Eloise has dealt with a lot in her life so far. She
has faced many of the typical preemie issues: PDA, lung issues, NEC
(that was scary!), multiple blood transfusions, bradycardia, etc. She
also had some issue gaining weight early on. She has gone through physical therapy and multiple cast for her club foot. Such a minor thing considering all the
obstacles she has already overcome. At 6 we learned she was also autistic and has ADHD. But she is a spunky little fighter. She is living proof that God still performs miracles. She brings joy to a room and I wouldn't want it any other way.
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