FTM, BIRTH STORY 💙💛

So I had my son on Friday! November 8th, 2019 @1:50 pm. He weighed 6 lbs 14.4 oz and is 18 inches long 😊. He was born at 34 weeks 2 days!

On Thursday I went to my normal 2 pm doctors appointment for Nonstress Testing. First of all, I had been feeling awful for about a week before this. I felt ill and just not like myself, sore all over, more swollen than usual. I had been diagnosed with Gestational Hypertension since I was 23 weeks so my blood pressures were normally a little up there. During NST that day my BP was 161/98, and wouldnt come down. Not to mention I had been having contractions every 30-45 minutes since the day before- but during testing those contractions caused my sons heart rate to drop. So I got sent up to Labor & Delivery and was admitted for over night monitoring. My blood pressures stayed high and higher, I tested positive for protien in my urine, I was having bad headaches- and got diagnosed with severe preeclampsia. The doctors came in at 11:30 that night and told me, "Mrs Richards- you're gonna have a baby tomorrow- we're inducing you in the morning" .. I was also checked for dilation at this time, and I had already dilated to 1 cm on my own. Time to mentally prepare myself lol. I lost my mucus plug around 1 am! I got put on magnesium and was not allowed to leave my bed, nor eat or drink anything. I tried sleeping all night but contractions steadily kept me awake. There was no sleeping. At 8:15 am, doctor came back to my room to check me- I was dilated to 3 cm and put on Pitocin to fasten my labor. God did that suck!!!! 12:15 pm rolls around, doctor comes back to my room for a check- I was 5 cm dilated and he decided to break my water. After that everything went so fast!! I asked for the epidural cause I reached my dilation goal without it and things were starting to get pretty rough. They came to my room at 12:20 to do it, it took them almost a freaking hour to get it done! During the epidural, they had to keep stopping because my contractions were so strong and started coming every 1-2 minutes, lasting for 60-90 seconds! I remember sitting on the edge of the bed, saying I can't do this when I felt the urge to poop really bad. So I told my nurse and next thing you know, as I sat there my body forced me to push while I tried my hardest to stop it. Doctors flooded my room and the epidural finally got finished, I laid back and was told I was 9 cm dilated at 1:15 pm. Doctor told me to start pushing whenever I felt ready and they explained to me how we were gonna do it. I started pushing at 1:22 pm, pushed 9 times and gave birth to Hudson Patrick Rand @ 1:50 pm! My epidural didnt kick in until after he was born 😒 . He was premature so I held him for 5 minutes and the NICU took him from me.

About an hour later I was being moved to a postpartum room and they took me to see my son first. As I sat in my wheelchair holding him, I felt a very big gush of fluid and told the nurse. When we looked down there was blood everywhere . I was rushed to my PP room and laid on the bed, had a catheter put in and found I was bleeding so much because I was hemorrhaging. They pushed my stomach and 3 lbs of clots came out of me. They figured out I was hemorrhaging because some of the placenta and placental membrane got left behind. Next thing I know, there are 5 nurses holding me down- 1 nurse jabbing me in my stomach right below my belly button and the doctor has his entire freaking arm up inside of me- digging and scrapping my uterus trying to claw out that placenta. They did this to me for almost 2 hours, over and over again- while I screamed, cried, tried to fight them off of me, and begged for my life. It was all finally over and I had gone through so much n being still on magnesium- I was couldn't stay awake any longer. I slept long and hard after that. I couldn't stay awake more than 1-2 minutes after that until 5 pm the next day. I am doing much better and my son is happy n healthy though! He comes home from NICU in 1 week 💙

Thank you so much for reading! Heres some pics of my little guy for all of you who stuck around 😊