Tl;dr: I was preeclamptic and gave birth at 38 weeks to my son, who ended up being a lethargic baby that wouldn't breastfeed properly. This resulted in a nice (read: horrible) conversation with our pediatrician who accused me of not having any milk and not feeding my baby. And then we ended up in Children's Hospital for almost a week to get his weight, hydration and electrolytes stabilized. In short, preeclampsia sucks!

This may be a bit long, and I've been waiting to post it till I felt well enough to actually share my story. Well, actually, this is Baby Emmeric's story, and now that he's 3 weeks and 1 day old, I feel well enough to share a bit about it with people here.

Emmeric was born June 2nd at 3:12 pm after a long night of being induced and dealing with preeclampsia that wasn't formally diagnosed until after I was in labor. Emmeric weighed 6 lbs 13 oz. and was 19.5" long. His due date was June 14th, so you can imagine how much a surprise it was to have him come then.

Up until the 1st, my OB visits had definitely been trending toward preeclampsia. I had the high blood pressure (150/90 and 153/88 at two points), exceptional swelling (more on that later), and one instance of high protein in the urine. So when I went for my 38 week checkup on June 1st, my OB decided we needed to go ahead and deliver because he was really concerned about my going into eclampsia and having seizures. We packed up our things, a friend brought me things I hadn't purchased yet, and we went in to the hospital.

I didn't know that being admitted for an induction when you have preeclampsia meant that I'd be stuck in the bed the entire time. There went any of my ideas about a birth plan. I was 2 cm dilated when I arrived, and they started me on cervadil, a magnesium drip, and a catheter. I was on the cervadil overnight, and the magnesium made me feel like I could breathe fire. I felt like steam should be coming out of every orifice, and I kept the room frigid as a result. The night was rough. I didn't get much in the way of sleep.

The next morning, they removed the cervadil and started my pitocin in the drip. I still had magnesium drip as well, and I was starving. I'd eaten lunch before going in the day before, but all I had since then was a disgustingly syrupy slushy and ice chips. Luckily I had the most amazing labor nurse ever on the day of who gave me ice water. She also helped me to do a relaxation exercise that I used later when my contractions really picked up.

I was on pitocin from roughly 7 am to delivery, though they did cut it down significantly once they realized I wasn't going to be laboring all day. My husband and mom were in the room with me as the contractions really started building, and I was trying really hard to breathe through them. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore, and I asked for an epidural. The epidural was put in by a rather new looking anesthesiologist (well, young, anyway) who struggled to get it in, and it was absolutely miserable trying to be still while pressing back for the epidural and breathe through the contractions. It didn't work perfectly, either, because while my lower half went numb, I could still feel the pain of the contractions along the right side of my stomach and back. Apparently I was doing a lot of back labor, which I've heard is awful, but for me, it wasn't much different from regular period cramps. I kept asking for more of the epidural, but it never really got fixed to the point that I could get through the contractions without pain.

My labor nurse had another patient, who I apparently was neck and neck with in terms of dilation and labor. She ended up having to go help that woman deliver and left me for about 45 minutes, during which time I was supposed to be "laboring down." Let me just say, my mom is a labor nurse and wanted to check me because she thought I was already 10 cm at that point and ready to deliver. A new nurse came in to check me at the 45 minute mark and realized Emmeric's head was butting up against the catheter bag and he'd be crowning if it wasn't for that, so we went into labor mode pretty fast.

I was delivering in a teaching hospital, so my room absolutely filled up with people. I'm so glad modesty wasn't an issue. I had my labor nurse, my OB, his assistant, my original labor nurse, a nursing student, a baby nurse, and maybe one or two other people all in the room alongside my husband and mom. I was too busy figuring out how to push to be concerned about how many people were there. Emmeric was not in the right position, either, so the OB was a bit concerned about that. He was coming out sideways, facing my right leg. Because the pitocin did its job so well my labor was fast and furious for a first baby. I had him out in five contractions, and once I figured out what to focus on to push, it was actually the surprisingly easy part of the labor.

We had skin to skin time while the doctor stitched me up, which took over an hour because of all the second degree tears. They said I lost double the normal amount of blood they'd see in a vaginal delivery, and shortly after they stitched me up, I started feeling lightheaded and like I would pass out while I was holding the baby. I told my husband to take Emmeric and call the nurse immediately. So then there was another flood of people coming into the room, and they wanted to do another vaginal exam right away to make sure there was no additional bleeding. It was a bit traumatic.

I was on magnesium for another day and stuck in the L&D instead of the mother-baby unit. But that was a blessing in disguise because once I got moved to the mother-baby unit, things went a bit haywire. I struggled to get Emmeric to breastfeed because my boobs were so filled with water from the swelling I was barely able to produce milk. He lost 8 percent of his body weight while we were in the hospital, and because my blood pressure refused to stabilize, we ended up staying an extra day in the mother-baby unit as well. All told, we were there from Wednesday to Sunday before going home.

As a bonus story (and I'll make this short), we were home two days before our first pediatrician visit with Emmeric. We visited a pediatrician I wasn't familiar with because he was taking Medicaid patients. When we got there and he examined Emmeric, the pediatrician immediately started repeating over and over "Mommy, you have no milk. You're not feeding your baby!" I almost lost it, and my husband wanted to punch him in the face. Emmeric had lost over a pound of body weight and was severely dehydrated because he wasn't really breastfeeding properly.

We ended up being admitted to the local Children's Hospital on that Wednesday where we stayed until Saturday. They put an NG tube down his nose to try to get his electrolytes stabilized when they couldn't get an IV in after about 20 different attempts. I have never cried so hard as when I realized my baby was so sick and my husband was going to pass out from watching them stick his son so many times in the scalp.

Long story short, we got him stabilized and back home. We've been doing a combination of breast pumping and formula to make sure he takes in enough milk. We went back to our (new) pediatrician for a weight check today, and he's officially 7 lbs 4 oz, which is great because he clearly is gaining weight! So my little line jumping baby is finally starting to really stabilize after all that craziness.

I apologize for the long story, but I've been dying to share this story because even though I couldn't give you all the details, it's been one of the most draining experiences of my life, and being told by a pediatrician that I wasn't feeding my baby has been incredibly hard to overcome as he still isn't breastfeeding.

Well, that's all from this line jumper. Now I'm going to sit back and watch my husband cuddle his son.