What If? ft. Cassy

Where do I start when it comes to my story of giving birth?

On Wednesday, July 8th, 2015, I was doing my normal routine of working and heading home. My feet were swollen all day and it hurt to walk. I thought nothing of it because I was pregnant and it happened to a lot of pregnant women. 

When I got home, I started experiencing chest pains and a migraine. I decided to go to the emergency room because I previously had clots in my lungs and thought the chest pains were from the clots forming again.  

I get to the ER at 8pm and they immediately take me in to Triage to take my vitals. The nurse takes my blood pressure and it is 185/100. She looks at me with a worried look and says I'm going to take it again. She takes it again and it is the same. She makes one phone call and in a minute I am being wheeled into a room with approximately 3 doctors and 3 nurses. They didn't give me a chance to ask what's going on as they started poking me trying to get my veins to start an IV drip. They start giving me medicine to lower my blood pressure. I didn't even know what they were giving me. They just kept injecting me. The more they injected me, the more my blood pressure rose. The highest it hit was 210/120.

While all of this is going on, I'm telling them that I have to use the bathroom and throw up. They didn't listen and just kept injecting me with the medicine. I ended up throwing up in the plastic bag that they gave me to put my clothes in because nobody could find a pail. 

They continued the injections to lower my blood pressure until my OB/GYN showed up at approximately 9:30pm. She is a black Caribbean woman who does not play. She ordered them to stop giving me the injections because my pressure was still high and that what they were doing wasn't working. She told them that she was taking this baby out tonight. She told them to give me a shot of steroids to help the baby's lungs and prepare me for a c-section. They finally stopped injecting me... Thank you Jesus!!

On Thursday July 9th, 2015 at 33 weeks, I gave birth to my baby girl. I wasn't allowed to see her because I was still in a battle to get my blood pressure down. After the c-section, I was kept in a room and was on a magnesium drip for 24 hours. On Friday, I was finally able to see my daughter and get off the IV and drips. I was being given blood pressure medicine about 6 times a day. 

Everything was going well until Sunday evening when they saw that my blood pressure was not going down even with all of the pills. They put me back on the magnesium drip and 24 hour monitoring of my blood pressure. 

Thankfully, my OB/GYN came on the Monday morning and she told them to remove me from the drip. She told them that they didn't let her know that I was back on the drip and she would've told them no. She told them that I only need to be on the pills and to be monitored. I was released from the hospital Tuesday afternoon after they were able to get my blood pressure down with the pills.

I am forever grateful for my OB/GYN because she came in and shut it all down. Her priority was to make sure that my daughter and I were okay.

After that experience, it taught me to speak up and ask questions. I was so nervous and trusted what the doctors were saying but I always think about the what ifs. 

What if my OB/GYN didn't stop them? Would they have just continued to inject me with whatever meds? Would I even be here to tell this story?

We need to start speaking up when we are comfortable.