Then some more stuff happened

(Baby Half Caff birth story continued from here…)

The Sunday evening before B.H.C. was born we went in to the OB unit at the hospital so I could have the fever, contractions, lethargy, etc. checked out. They monitored the baby and my contractions, determined that I was dilated to a 1, and checked my vitals. The on call doctor never came in to look at me. The nurse was on the phone to him, but I was never seen by a doctor that night. My own doctor was unavailable and apparently no one from his office was taking call. So some strange doctor was giving orders related to my condition without seeing me. The nurse offered to admit me overnight, but I decided to just go home and try to rest. She gave me a dose of Tamiflu and advised me that the doctor had called in a full prescription for Tamiflu to my pharmacy so that I could take the full dose. Which turned out to be useless because I never actually had the flu.

The next couple of days are really fuzzy in my memory now. I know I couldn’t walk across a room without sitting down at least once. I could barely get my own clothes on. I know my mom and husband called my OB’s office more than once asking for advice but I was stubbornly waiting to see my doctor and so ill that I didn’t want to leave the house to go anywhere, let alone the ER or back to the OB ward. The thing is, I didn’t realize how sick I was. Looking back now I see it. But I was so out of it, and I had hardly eaten anything for days, and I convinced myself that I was tired because of the baby and couldn’t breathe because the baby was pressing on my diaphragm. I knew I was sick, but I didn’t realize that I was more sick than I had ever been in my life and that I was endangering myself and the baby.

Finally, on Wednesday I was scheduled to see my OB. I wanted to take a shower but I couldn’t stand up to do it, so Danny put a lawn chair in the shower so that I could sit under the water. He helped me get dressed and we dropped the kids off to my parents then headed in, no preparation, no overnight bag, no baby bag, no nothing. 

We got to the office and my OB got called away for an emergency C section before I could see him. Another doctor came in, looked at me, and said, “Go to the hospital. Now.”  I had lost seven pounds in the week that had passed since my last appointment, I could barely stand up, couldn’t breathe, was a total mess.

They wheeled me in a chair across to road to the hospital. I was in a delivery room when my OB finally came in. I was hugely relieved to see him and felt like finally someone would figure out what to do with me. My doctor said they were going to go ahead and take the baby by C section that afternoon, but that the anesthesiologist wanted to run some tests before doing the surgery. So I had chest Xrays, blood gases, other labs, nasal swabs, and a torturous experience where three different nurses attempted to get an IV in my arm. 

My doctor and the anesthesiologist finally came back in and said, “Jennifer, you have pneumonia. We need to get the baby out.” They then told me that they wanted to do my C section under a general instead of a spinal.