Welcome to the world, Nora Wren!

Born April 10 at 1:46 a.m., 3 lb. 9 oz., 17 inches
more pictures to come!

An alternate, and equally fitting, title for this post would be What happened?! That's what we were all wondering after Miss Nora decided to come 7 weeks early or, rather, my body decided to kick her out.

You see, I had a "normal" pregnancy. I hadn't had complications, though I had quite a bit of nausea and was somewhat miserable a lot of the time. But then, about a week and a half before Nora was born, I started having terrible back pain. Looking back, this is when everything started to come crashing down, but no one was able to put together the strange signs my body was sending.

I wasn't having lower back pain, it was more in my shoulder blades and chest, so we all assumed it must just be a chiropractic issue. In fact, I went to the chiropractor three times in one week and each time he temporarily made the pain go away. But, he couldn't figure out why it kept recurring. Another sign was that I was feeling nauseous all the time, but that can just come on in the third trimester during a normal pregnancy, so no one was the wiser and I was prescribed yet a third nausea medicine.

Let's skip to the diagnosis. I had what's called HELLP Syndrome, an advanced form of preeclampsia. Here's what the Preeclampsia Foundation says:

HELLP syndrome is a life-threatening pregnancy complication usually considered to be a variant of preeclampsia. 

HELLP syndrome was named by Dr. Louis Weinstein in 1982 after its characteristics:

H (hemolysis, which is the breaking down of red blood cells),
EL (elevated liver enzymes) and
LP (low platelet count).

How did we discover this? I left work early on Tuesday, April 9 with the terrible back pain again. I also generally felt bad. I couldn't get in to my normal chiropractor that day and the pain was so bad (9 out of 10 pain) that I found another chiropractor who could get me in immediately. After the adjustment, the pain was temporarily relieved for about an hour. When it came back with a vengeance, I couldn't stand it. Though I had already scheduled an appointment with my regular chiropractor the next morning, I knew I couldn't make it through the night with such pain. So, at about 10:30 p.m. Levi decided we should go to the ER. I'm so thankful we did. 

You should know that I had been to my OBGYN appointment earlier that day and everything appeared normal. My blood pressure was normal (usually it's extremely high with preeclampsia) and nothing else seemed amiss. But, in the ER, it was a totally different story. My blood pressure was 180/118 and blood work and a urine test showed signs of preeclampsia and HELLP. My liver was not functioning well, which it turns out was the cause of all my back pain. Plus, my platelet count was extremely low, causing me to come close to requiring a platelet transfusion. In other words, I was very, very sick. My body had compensated as long as it could and it was giving up. 

The doctor said I should expect to deliver the baby "soon," but I had no idea how soon that would be. In fact, as soon as I reached the other hospital by ambulance (we went to the hospital that doesn't deliver babies because we thought it was just back pain), I was swarmed by a group of nurses and doctors and told that I would have to be put completely under since my platelet count was so low and they would do an emergency c-section. Levi barely arrived in time to see me be wheeled into the operating room as I was bawling and telling him how scared I was. I was in such an emotional shock.

For the next few days I was very sick. My blood pressure was still out of control and my blood work wasn't good. Slowly, though, my platelet count improved and I began to recover both from HELLP and from the c-section. Nora was fine from the beginning. She didn't need oxygen and was just put in the NICU to help her develop her feeding mechanism. She will still be there for a little while longer, though she's doing well and starting to take a bottle. I stayed in the hospital for 5 days and am glad to finally be home. Now we're just waiting for her to join us. That day can't come soon enough.