ANITA'S BIRTH STORY

My due date was September 25th, Mateo ended up coming early at the gestational age of 36 weeks, 5 days. Here's the quickie version of the birth saga... On Thursday evening (Aug 30th) I had severe upper right abdominal pain. This worried us, since (as some of you know) I was being monitored for high blood pressure and the potential to develop pre-eclampsia, which can have abdominal pain as one of the potential symptoms of the liver going bad. We rushed to St. Luke's Hospital as the pain got increasingly severe, where I was admitted and it was discovered that due to an egregious lab error I had been walking around with undiagnosed pre-eclampsia for over a week. However, the pain was not from the pre-eclampsia- oddly enough it was from an unrelated gallbladder attack. After a night of horrendous pain, the gallbladder attack subsided and the team at St. Luke's decided it was necessary to induce labor due to the pre-eclampsia. The labor itself was very difficult lasting from Friday through Sunday morning, with some scary moments related to the pre-eclampsia, but eventually on early Sunday morning I was able to give birth vaginally to my beautiful baby, who throughout all of this drama had never once been in distress or in any way compromised. To top off everything, I had surgery on Tuesday afternoon to remove the gallbladder, and finally got to come home on Wednesday. We are all doing well, but very exhausted and of course, I am recovering from the intense labor experience as well as from surgery so I have a lot of bed rest and recuperating to do. This was one of the most difficult challenges of my life, and I want to say that I could not have made it without the amazing providers at St. Luke's who kept me safe while supporting me to have the beautiful birth experience that I had hoped for when I was planning my homebirth. Even more essential was my amazing birth team, No way can I ever be thankful enough for my best friend Jen Schwartz, friend & doula Kim Bambao, midwife Deborah Simone, and my husband & partner Jesse. They loved me, protected me and gave me strength to make it through the arduous journey. I also immensely appreciate our friends and family who have helped out, worried for us and prayed for us. We love you all! Jesse, Mateo and I will be slowly emerging back into the world, and we look forward to having you meet our new family.