It's Just Too Early

We went to dinner at Brett’s house. Seven of us sat around, chatted and ate. I talked pregnancy and birth with the girls and verbalised that I really didn’t want to do the ‘baby having an extended stay in hospital’ thing. That didn’t sound fun at all. After dinner I noticed that baby still hadn’t noticeably moved. It was the little gush of fluid leakage though that had me making eyes at Chris and announcing that we’d be headed home. Only we didn’t go home. We went to the hospital. I’d sleep better if I could have a quick checkup.

Chris dropped me at the main entrance and headed home with the dog. As I plodded down the hall towards MAC, I felt something wet touching my leg. The back of my dress had turned a darker shade of blue, soaked with amniotic fluid. I was taken into MAC and immediately hooked up to a CTG. I wasn’t worried. I’d been leaking fluid for weeks now and had a normal CTG at home that morning. Things had looked great.

After a few minutes though, it was obvious things were different. Our little one had always been praised for their CTGs. The baseline heart rate sat predictably between 145 and 160 beats per minute and were punctuated with lots of accelerations as baby happily swam around in my belly. This time though, the heart rate was 175+ and doing nothing exciting. Plus, I still hadn’t felt movement.

Still, I told Chris to come back to the hospital with the intention of picking me up. I’d be out of there soon enough. They hooked me up to some fluids and I figured that’d settle things down and we’d be on our way. When Chris arrived though, leaving started to look less and less promising.

When I was asked to get into a purple gown and was wheeled into a room full of things to support a new baby, my hope of keeping this little one in began to dwindle.

Before long I was having a second cannula put in and I was hooked up to magnesium sulfate, used to help protect a baby’s brain if they came early. The ‘mag sulf,’ as it was affectionately called by the midwives, was bloody horrible. Before they gave it to me I was warned that it can induce a sense of impending doom, panic, a speeding heart and hot flushes. Thankfully, the hot flushes and speeding heart were the worst I experienced. Chris went back and forth wetting towels for my head and chest but nothing seemed to help. I was boiling up but that was about to become the least of my worries.

When I saw a woman walk in wearing full scrubs at 1am, I knew we were in trouble. “It’s looking like baby is going to have to come out. We’re going to try and give you until 3am to let the Magnesium Sulfate have 4 hours to work.” Half an hour later she was back. “I’ve spoken to my boss and we’ve decided it’s best for baby to come out. Now.”

I sobbed uncontrollably and between sobs cried “It’s just too early.”