Perhaps I should start at the beginning, I've always wanted kids and lots of kids at that. I always said that about 8-10 kids would be nice. So when I got married in Decmeber 2003 I was ready to get pregnant right away. And taking after my mother I was pregnant within 2 months. Shortly after valentine's day I found out that we were going to have a baby. I was so excited. I had always figured that I'd be a good pregnant women, afterall I wanted so many kids. Everything was going fine until about 2 weeks after I found out I was pregnant. I woke up one morning I thought I was dying, it was like the worst flu times 10. I figured this must be what morning sickness is, and it was much worse than I had ever imagined. It got worse and worse and I just kept dealing with it. I finally got to go to the OB and received some meds for it. It took about 3 months however to realize that this was not normal morning sickness, what I had was Hyperemesis Gravidarum. I rare condition of pregnancy that causes severe nausea and vomiting leading to dehydration and weight loss. The HG never went away during my pregnancy but it did ease up a bit. I thought I had everything under control and I would simply ride through the rest of my pregnancy, not quite though.
About halfway through I started to get a terrible sharp pain in my stomach, I thought it was nothing and ignored it. Until finally at 30 weeks I was woke up by the pain being so severe that I screamed in pain when I moved. I went to the ER and found out I had a hernia, no big deal but while I was there I noticed I was having contractions pretty regularly. My OB brushed it off and said it was no big deal so I didn't think much of it. Two day later though I noticed that my "Braxton Hicks" were 5 minutes apart. After an hour of contractions we became alarmed and head to the hospital. By the time we got there the contractions had stopped but my cervix had dilated 1cm so my OB put me on bedrest and sent me home. The next day it happened again so we headed back to the hospital, again the contractions stopped. This continued to happen daily until 31 weeks when the contractions didn't stop. The hospital gave me terbutaline to stop them and they warned me that since it was a small island with no NICU that if the contractions didn't stop that I'd have to be flown to Oahu. The terb. didn't work so they gave me more and when it didn't help they switched to magnesium. At this point I was 3cm dilated and my OB said she was sending me to Oahu. Everything got pretty crazy, the magnesium was horrible. It literally felt like I was being burned alive, I wanted to rip off all my clothes and crawl into a tub of ice. I was put on strong antibiotic and received a catheter and wasn't allowed to even sit up. I was transfer by ambulance to the Naval base where I was transfered to a plane and flown to Oahu, another ambulance then took me to another hospital.
The doctors and nurses were all very nice but I was very uncomfortable. I spent a week in the hospital and the contractions never stopped. My cervix stopped dilating so I was allowed to leave the hospital but had to remain on Oahu until I hit 34 weeks. I was in a lot of pain from all of the contractions and had a bad urinary tract infection from the catheter. I was so happy to finally come home after being gone for so long, I was home less than a week before I went into labor again at 35 weeks. Again the hospital stopped the labor, at this point I was pretty upset I had been through so much and was simply ready to get the baby out. Again I returned home. By now I was in severe pain, everything hurt and I could hardly walk. The HG was getting bad again and I returned to frequent nausea and vomiting. At my 37 week appointment I had developed pregnancy induced hypertension, I was so happy to find this out. It's not something you want, but since it meant the baby had to be born I was happy. I was sent straight to labor and delivery for an induction. When I got there they found out I was already having regular contractions, no big surprise though. They started pitocin and everything was going good. I wasn't really in pain, they checked me and I was at about 3.5cm. About 2 hours later my water broke, but still not really in pain. It was only about an hour later that the pain started, and it was BAD. I asked the nurse to check me because I wanted an epidural but she wouldn't since it was my first baby and there was no way I was to the required 6cm yet. An hour later I was screaming and she finally checked me 6cm! She called my OB and when she got there 10 minutes later I was 8cm so she called for the epidural. It wasn't even 15 minutes later that I realized there was no time to get an epidural, things were moving VERY fast. I asked the nurse about just getting a shot of pain meds because there wasn't time for the epidural so said okay but a minute later I had to push. She ran for my OB and when she got in the baby was crowning. I pushed for about 20 minutes and Isabella was born. Induced with no pain meds and it hurt so bad. I was really mad that I didn't get my epidural but the HG was completely gone instantly and I felt great. I wanted to dance down the hallway.
That night my husband slept and I was sitting there looking at my new baby, I had waited 9 months to meet her and finally here she was and people expected me to just go to sleep. There was no way, I sat up all night just looking at her. It was so special, what a wonderful night that was.
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