Part I:
Thursday Oct 31
st I was sitting in my cube at work. I felt
nauseous. I felt that way getting ready for work in the morning but just
thought maybe my blood sugar levels were off. I sometimes feel that way
when that happens, but this is also a symptom of HELLP syndrome. At about
8:30 I felt like I might be having very weak contractions which made the
nauseous feeling worse. I left work and drove to the park to call my husband. I
wasn’t feeling well (nauseous still, so I knew I’d break down
crying). Wes said later, “What did you expect? A tree to deliver
you? Or go down the slide and POP, out comes baby?” Ha
Wes came to Sioux Center while I waited outside the Sioux Center Hospital
and called my midwife Terry Englemann. She recommended getting
checked out before we drove all the way to Sioux Falls. Dr.
Jamie Vitamvas checked me out, and I was dilated to 0. They
tested my blood. She said I had a slight Urinary Tract Infection which can
cause early contractions. She gave me a prescription to take for the infection
and another prescription to slow the contractions and relax my
uterus. She had called my high-risk doctor, Dr. Jeffrey Boyle in Sioux
Falls. Since I was 35 weeks, he was fine with me being discharged and waiting
it out.
When we went to Lewis to fill out the pre-labor prescription, the pharmacist
there said “That’s strange. I haven’t seen this drug get filled out in 6 years.
And today it’s been filled twice. Another lady in the same circumstances as
you, 35 weeks got it filled by the same doctor.” He told us it was a narcotic,
so the longer we took it, the greater chance it affected the baby. He said he
would only take it a day or so, and then get checked out again. I took
one that night at supper.
About 3am the next morning, Friday, November the 1
st, the
contractions were getting worse. At 7am we counted the contractions, and they
were five minutes apart. We went to the Rock Valley hospital about
8:00 to get checked out again. Dr. Green was on call. She said I was
dilated to 2. She looked at the blood work from the Sioux Center
Hospital and said there was NO urinary tract infection.
In both the Sioux Center hospital and the Rock Valley hospital, they had
attached the fetal monitoring discs. At Rock Valley, the machine wasn’t picking
up baby’s heartbeat all the time. I think she was just in a position that
it wasn’t reading her heartbeat very well. Dr. Green conferred with
Dr. Boyle. With the blips in baby’s heartbeat, contractions
increasing in intensity, and dilating to 2, he wanted me brought to Sioux
Falls. They continued the fetal monitoring a bit longer to make
sure baby was stable while the ambulance was getting prepped. Wes
asked the ambulance driver if he could follow. They said
they couldn’t tell him to do that since they would have their
lights on. He wondered later if he should have asked if they could follow him!
In the ambulance I was hooked up to another fetal monitoring device. It
wasn’t picking up my contractions very well, so I had to tell them when they
started and stopped. Let me just tell you, an ambulance is not air-ride
equipped.
