I wanted to share my pregnancy story so that other women who are facing difficulties in their preganancies might not feel so alone. I had a very difficult pregnancy from the beginning. I was 28 and in pretty good shape when I got pregnant. Like most women I still wanted to lose a few pounds but my doctor told me they expected me to gain about 25 - 30 lbs. I had a cold when the doctor confirmed I was preganant. I felt miserable because I couldn't take any medication but I wasn't having any morning sickness. As soon as I got over the cold the horrible morning sickness started. In my case I would get sick every single night. I would get up and go to work and be fine but as soon as I got home I would be so sick all I could do was lay down and try not to throw up. Nothing I tried worked and I had morning sickness until I was 18 weeks.
The second trimester was much better but I still felt drained all the time. Since this was my first pregnancy I thought this was normal. Then around the 23rd week I started to get swelling in my feet and I felt continually worse. I couldn't get any sleep at night and I would have to go to work after only getting a couple of hours of sleep. I discussed this with my ob/gyn and she told me this was normal. As this was my first preganancy I thought the doctor was rightl. At the 25th week I started getting preterm contractions. I would get painful contractions in the afternoon at work. I went to the hospital numerous times where I would get a shot to stop the contractions.As the weeks progressed the swelling in my feet got worse and eventually moved to my hands. All of my joints started hurting and the swelling in my feet caused me so much pain it was difficult to walk.
When I went to my 35th week checkup I had high blood pressure, the first time in my life, and they found protein in my urine. They sent me home with a 24 hour urine test and I was to follow up within 2 days. At my follow up appointment it was confirmed that I had preeclampsia. I was immediatley put on bed rest and I was monitored very closely by the doctor. I had to go to the office every other day and they would run a different test every time. My docotor visits would last a minimum of 2 hours every time. During this time I was extremely worried about the baby's health. They performed another ultrasound and found that the baby was underweight and that she was breech. It seemed that with every doctor visit all I got was news that made me worry.
Finally on August 7th I got a call from my doctor informing me that my lab results had come back abnormal. My protein levels were 4000 times higher than what they should be and I needed to checkin to the hospital to be induced. After they performed another ultrasound at the hospital they found that the baby was still breech. My husband and I had to make the decision of trying to have the doctor manually try to move the baby into the correct position or to have a c-section. Since their was a chance the baby could get hurt if they tried to manually move her we decided to go ahead with the c-section. My beautiful daughter was born weighing only 4lbs 6ozs but she was 100% healthy. As soon as I was moved out of the surgery recovery room I started to feel better. My joint pain started to decrease and my blood pressure had gone down. I still had a lot of swelling all over my body and that continued until about 2 weeks after I gave birth. It has been 10 weeks since I gave birth and the baby and I are both doing great.
