This will be a long story but it is worth a read. My pregnancy had been so wonderful. All my visits had been normal even my visit to test for gestational diabetes (which shocked me as I am considered overweight and my family has a long history of diabetes) Everything was great until I went to see my ob and we noticed my blood pressure was high. I was sent to her hospital for 2 days and released the night before my baby shower with a diagnoses of preeclampsia. I took my meds as I was supposed to and went for twice weekly checks of the baby. about a week after I was released from the hospital I was at home getting up to get a drink. All of a sudden I crashed back into the bed in pain so bad I started to cry. I called my fiance who rushed home from work. As he was on thr way I called the hospital and the nurse told me it was in my best interest to go to another hospital a little closer to me as they have a NICU and if he is coming now they will take him there anyway. When we arrived they started running tests and determined that the baby was ok but my bp was in the high 160s. The pain had apparently been my son stretching and catching me the wrong way. They admitted me for high bp and told me the high risk team would be by to see me in the morning after some monitoring. To make a long story shorter they told me I would be in the hospital until they induced me because they could not keep it down. It was determined I would be induced at 37 weeks. After a long 26 days of being there and my poor fiance on the couch there every night it was finally time. My nurses happily packed me up and off we went to labor and delivery. I was given the drugs to induce my labor but hours later we still weren't getting anywhere. They then decided to use a balloon to help me dilate. That was the worst pain ever and I was so happy when I dialted enough for it to come out. They decided to do a membrane wipe and soon after my water broke. I was having small contractions but nothing powerful. I finally went to sleep after my family finally called it a night. I woke my fiance up the next morning because I needed him to hold my hand through some more intense contractions. by that afternoon they were powerful enough that I wanted the epidural. This is where all the problems began for us. Getting it put in was fine. When they hit me with the first dose though my blood pressure dropped. I remember getting sick and telling my nurse I felt tired. Then I heard her yelling for me to lay back but I couldn't move. My eyes rolled back as she pushed me to the bed and I don't remember anything else. When I came to my fiance was ghost white. He told me he loved me and was gonna let my mom in for a bit. My mom said he was tearing up when he was telling her what happened and I guess he went to the car to pull himself together so he wouldn't stress me. After an evening of being flipped back and forth because the babies heart rate would drop my family left. At around 11:30 I started having weird pressure and told my nurse it felt like I needed to push. They called one of the residents I had been dealing with in and we discovered I was dilated enough but my son wasn't far enough down yet. She asked if anyone had talked to me about pushing as this is my first child. I told her no and she decided we would do a practice push. Well I guess I pushed pretty good because he was in position and she was calling everyone in. The resident that took her place and was helping me kept putting her fingers in the same place and pushing hard. I was telling her she was hurting me and she kept telling me she was just helping me. My fiance and mother who were holding my legs were trying to distract me but I was getting really upset that she wasn't listening to me. Finally a doctor that I don't know pushed in (I found out later he usually performs the c sections and he came in to check the progress of my situation and heard me telling her she was hurting me. This man is an ANGEL!) He took her place and the pain stopped. He encouraged me the whole way and discreetly sent out word to NICU that they needed to come quick. He had seen the cord wrapped around my sons throat and had pushed his head back down a little and told me to hang on. I was out of it so I layed back and waited. When NICU was ready he put lube over my childs head and in what my fiance describes he twisted my son as I pushed and quickly sliced the cord with a scalpel telling my fiance sorry dad. My fiance and mother distracted me. I was in a daze and so tired from all of this so it was easy. Plus my placenta was coming out so I still had people messing with me. My fiance had seen our son. He was blue and NICU was working on him. There was grunts coming from him but not the crying you would expect. They manually extracted my placenta so I was so tired and just done when I was finally handed my son. I held him long enough for a few pictures and he was whisked away. My fiance found the doc in the hall and he told him again that he was sorry. My fiance told him he understood that it had to be done. We found out from the doc that he noticed the pattern in the babies heart rate dropping from my scans and he wished someone else would have because if he had seen them before I was pushing he would have recommended a c section immediately. My family was waiting but they weren't gonna be able to see my son for awhile so they came to me. They were all telling me how well I did and my aunt and mother were telling me I was amazing for not screaming. My fiance and I finally fell asleep once they left. When I woke up I was still on bed rest from the magnesium they had me on because of the blood pressure. My fiance had snuck up to check on our son while I was sleeping. When he came down he told me what had gone on. Our son was resuscitated 3 times, he had had absolutely no muscle tone at all and was placed in an incubator while I slept. When my fiance got there after a nap our son was moving and full of life again. The nurses said he was doing great. His head was very misshapen because of the delivery and you had to support his neck. If you touched his head he would scream in pain. My fiance convinced a nurse to bring him to me for 5 minutes since he couldn't be with me because of the drugs I was on (NICU had released him by this point) Finally the next day I was able to get up and finally have him with me. My son Henry was born Feb. 23rd at 1:57 AM. He is truly my little warrior

baby as he keeps beating all expectations