Remembering the birth, Part I

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.