The Pain That Didn't Feel Right
Friday morning, around 4:45am, I woke up with a weird pain under my ribs. My first thought was that Annie was just running out of room in there. But it didn't feel like the normal squish. It nagged at me.
Then I remembered a Facebook post from three or four years ago. A coworker's wife had a baby and posted about something called HELLP, and it started with pain under her ribs too. I went back and found the post. It sounded similar enough that it freaked me out a little.
HELLP is a form of preeclampsia, and I'd always had low blood pressure. I was low risk. I wasn't even on baby aspirin. So logically I probably should have shrugged it off. But it just didn't feel right, so I called my mom, she came over, and David and I got ready to go to the hospital. He wasn't even going to pack a bag. I told him to pack one anyway, just in case, since I was only 37 weeks and had no idea how this was going to go.
HELLP, Not Heartburn
At triage they took my blood pressure and it was totally normal. A nurse offered me something for acid reflux. I kept saying no, it's not like that, it feels more muscular, deeper. They ran bloodwork and did an ultrasound, and it turned out everything I was feeling was my liver and spleen, both pushed up under my ribs because at 37 weeks there's just nowhere else for your organs to go.
Around noon a doctor finally came in and told me they were pretty sure I had preeclampsia, and that it could show up even without high blood pressure. This specific version is called HELLP, high liver enzymes and low platelets, and it's a severe one. She told me the only way to fix it was to get the baby out. So I wasn't leaving without her.
I was terrified of being induced. I'd heard the horror stories, days of labor, no progress, pain with no end. But at that point there wasn't really a choice.
The Platelet Rollercoaster
This is where things started going sideways. Around 4pm, an anesthesiologist came in to tell me my platelets were at 100, right at the cutoff for an epidural, and they'd need to recheck before doing anything. He didn't seem too worried about it. He explained that if platelets are too low there's a risk of bleeding around the nerves during the epidural, with no way to clot it off, which could mean serious nerve damage. Scary stuff to hear casually.
By the time they rechecked around 5pm, my platelets had dropped to 75. Below the hard floor of 100. So I was told flat out, no epidural.
I remember freaking out. They tried to soften it, telling me I could still get IV pain medication, and that there was a doula and a midwife who could help me through it naturally. Both came in separately to give me a pep talk, and for a little while I actually felt steadier.
Screaming Through It
They placed a balloon to help dilate me to 4 centimeters, and it came out around 10pm on its own, which was a good sign. Then they broke my water and things ramped up fast. I got one dose of morphine for a headache that was killing me, and it did basically nothing, not for the headache and definitely not for the contractions.
I was one of those women you hear about, screaming through it. At one point they checked me and I was at six centimeters. That number stuck in my head for the rest of labor.
Because I'd tested positive for Group B strep, they weren't doing frequent cervical checks, so I had no idea how far along I actually was after that. I just kept thinking, you're only at six, you're being ridiculous, if it's this bad now you'll never make it to ten. I spiraled on that thought for what felt like forever. At what I still thought was six centimeters, I asked for a C-section. I told them I couldn't do it anymore.
The doula and midwife who'd given me that pep talk never came back, by the way. I don't know what happened there. All I had left was a black plastic hair comb someone handed me, the kind where you squeeze it in your palm and focus on that pain instead of the contraction. It sounds ridiculous. It actually helped.
An Angel Appears
Out of nowhere, the on call anesthesiologist walked in and told me my platelets had stabilized enough for an epidural. I said yes before he even finished the sentence.
I was contracting through the placement, which was its own kind of awful, and afterward, lying there waiting for it to kick in, my left thigh started burning. I panicked. I was sure something had gone wrong, that this was the nerve damage they'd warned me about. I was yelling that my leg hurt and something was wrong. They finally checked me again and realized I was fully dilated. I'd been way further along than anyone realized. What I was feeling wasn't a failed epidural, it was just pressure from her moving down, since an epidural blocks pain but not pressure.
She's Here!
We did a practice push and I felt her move through the birth canal almost immediately, which honestly surprised me, I thought there'd be more to it. Three contractions and about nine pushes later, Annie was here.
The Recovery Wasn't Simple
I had some retained placental membranes that had to be scraped out with a tool, and thank God the epidural was already in for that part, I don't know what I would have done otherwise. I hemorrhaged afterward too, lost about a liter of blood, almost the exact same thing that happened after Jamie. They offered me a transfusion but I opted for an iron infusion instead, and ended up recovering well enough to go home early.
Annie came in at 7 lbs 8 oz, three weeks early, which honestly might have saved me from an even bigger baby, she'd already passed Jamie's birth weight and he went to 40 weeks. She dropped to 6 lbs 13 oz before climbing back up.
How She's Different from Jamie
She's been such an easier baby than Jamie was as a newborn. Calmer, more settled. And I've felt calmer too, more able to trust that the hard moments actually pass. Jamie came out wide awake and stayed that way, and for months I was scared of him in this low grade, always on edge kind of way. With Annie, even when she's up at 2am, some part of me can just think, okay, you're awake, let's hang out, instead of spiraling.
Jamie is obsessed with her. First thing he says most mornings is "baby girl," and he drags his little step stool over to her bassinet just to say hi.
Fast Forward Three Weeks...
I thought that was the whole story. HELLP, an early delivery, blood pressure that never once tipped anyone off. I figured the hard part was behind me.
It wasn't.
Three weeks postpartum, the bleeding I'd been managing got heavier out of nowhere. Cramping that had been mild and occasional for about a week turned sharp, and then came this feeling low in my pelvis, like I'd ridden a bike way too hard. I went to urgent care, not panicking exactly, just because something felt different, and I've learned the hard way this year that different is worth checking.
It turned into a hospital stay. An ultrasound found something concerning, and a CT scan confirmed it, a uterine AVM, an abnormal tangle of blood vessels, tied to retained tissue that hadn't fully cleared after delivery. The next morning a team of doctors went in through my groin, blocked off the blood vessels feeding it, and removed the retained tissue right after. Two procedures in one long day, and by the next morning I was stable, the bleeding had slowed, and I was already asking about going home.
I was discharged less than 48 hours later. No complications, good numbers, a team that took it seriously from the first ultrasound to my last check before leaving.
I don't have a neat ending for this part yet. What I do have is this. My body went through two pregnancies that each tried to take more from me than anyone pictures when they think "having a baby." And both times, someone caught it in time. Both times, I'm still here, writing this, with two kids down the hall.
If there's a lesson in all of it, it's the same one twice over. Trust what your body is telling you, even weeks later, even when you think you're past the hard part. You might not be. And that's okay.
