Our Early Arrival

Paige Lydia Jepson arrived April 10, 2012 at 8:45 pm. She was 6 lbs 2 oz and 20 inches long.She was about 3 weeks early but is doing great. She was 6 lbs 8 oz at her 2 week check up so she is sure packing on the ounces and trying to grow. That is basically the cliff notes version. Stay tuned if you want the whole story.

After Karl's Spring Break my family came up for theirs. It was so great seeing them. We got to try frisbee golf and spent most of the week at a beach house. While they were here I noticed that my feet were getting really swollen so I thought "Hmmm, I wonder what my blood pressure is." So the night after our frisbee golf adventure I checked and it was pretty high. About 150/90. That is not a good number to have. So I started worrying but I laid down and checked it again after a few minutes and it went down so I figured I was fine and just needed to take it easy.

So we headed off to the beach house and I didn't take my BP cuff because I didn't want to get worried or worry anyone else. My taking it easy consisted of walks on the beach (exercise is good while pregnant right?), building sand castles, going on a hike, and hanging out with family. I didn't get off my feet like I should have but we had a good time. The night my family left I checked again and it was still 150's/90's, this time it wouldn't go down, even when I checked before got out of bed after a whole night. So I put myself on bedrest and called the dr. Karl had to take me to the hospital to get checked out. I started getting really nervous, excited and scared because it started to be real that we could be having this baby really soon. After hours of waiting and tests I was officially put on strict bedrest until I saw my dr on Monday. I was having all the signs of pre-eclampsia. I had protein spilling into my urine, uric acid levels were high, my platelets were low, and of course my blood pressure was really high.

Best rest is not fun. I was really bored and really glad I didn't have to do it for very long. It wouldn't have been too bad if I could sit up or felt bad but I felt fine and they were very specific that I needed to lay on my side at all times. Not sit or lay on my back. My side only, and I could only get up to go to the bathroom. So Monday rolled around and I went to the Dr. Everything was still high and hadn't changed so I got to go straight from his office to the hospital to be admitted.

That night around 9 they gave me cervadil to try and get me dilated and ready to go into labor. They said it would take about 12 hours. While we waited for it to kick in they came to talk about pain management. I was told because of how low my platelets were an epidural might not be an option. What I got from the conversation was that I was at risk for bleeding into my spinal cord and basically getting paralyzed if I got one (perfect, that sounds like a great option), we could do IV meds (great, lets just make it harder for my baby who is already at risk for having immature lungs), or go natural (really not what i want to hear right now). With that on my mind we just waited for things to start going, and go they did. About three hours later. Apparently that medicine threw me into labor way too fast and i started contracting every 30 seconds. This meant no breaks and lots of hurting. And I didn't think I was even in labor yet because my 12 hours was not up. I just kept thinking if I can't even handle this there is NO WAY I am going to be able to handle labor without pain meds.

Next problem. Because of how often I was contracting and the fact that I wasn't really progressing they were worried that my uterus was going to rupture (awesome). Next step-terbutaline. This is what they usually give moms in pre-term labor to stop contractions. And of course, lucky me, it didn't work. This meant moving on to magnesium sulfate which usually has pretty nasty side effects. The mag was going to pull double duty to try and slow the contractions and keep me from having a seizure since my blood pressure was so high. About this time they came in and said my platelets had gone up enough that it was safe to get an epidural if I wanted it (YES!!). 

After those kicked in I spent the majority of the night and next day asleep.The mag made it so I could barely keep my eyes open for 2 minutes at a time. Nothing was really happening, Karl was able to go to school and get some things done that he needed to. I just had to sit around and have an oxygen mask on to make sure the baby was getting enough. They were starting to get worried that they were going to have to do a C-section because I wasn't dilating fast enough. Then Karl came back to the hospital and I went from a 4 to an 8 in a few hours. Apparently I was just waiting for him to get there. From then on everything went really smoothly and Paige arrived about 24 hours after they induced me.

 I really wanted her to be named Bailey. Really a lot. We had decided that we were going to wait until we saw her to pick a name. I told Karl we needed to wait until morning because I was seeing double and couldn't really see her face (thanks to the residual really high blood pressure). That night I woke up thinking "Where's Paige?" I had to remind myself we hadn't decided on a name yet. I woke up again later in the night thinking the same thing. That was my confirmation. Paige was Karl's first choice and I am glad we ended up going with it. But I still want a Bailey some day. :)

So that is how we got our Paige. We absolutely adore her and she is the cutest little girl EVER. She is so great, never really cries, and is absolutely adorable with her daddy.