Newborn Life: 5

It had now been 2 days since I was left at the hospital. I was convinced I was going home. They even told me that everything looked good, I just needed my blood pressure to go down and they would send me home (it was in the 160s). I thought hearing that I could go home would bring my blood pressure down, but it didn’t. The nurse just kept checking my blood pressure throughout the day and it didn’t go down. Finally at 4pm the hospitalist came in and said that she really didn’t understand why it hadn’t gone down. At that moment, they were playing with my meds quite a bit and just kept uping the dose and she didn’t understand why it wasn’t budging. She then told me that she thinks I just need to see my baby. I mean, yeah, of course I missed him tremendously. So bad my heart just ached and couldn’t think about anything else. But does that really affect your blood pressure? So at 5pm on Tuesday, I was moved back to the baby floor and Brock and Mason came to visit me. When they walked in that room, Brock and I had no words and just hugged and cried. We were so happy to be reunited and to know that I was going to be okay. All I needed was to get out of that place! At 6:30pm they checked my blood pressure and it was 137! Sometimes family is the only medicine you really need. They were able to spend the night with me and my numbers stayed low throughout the night. When morning rolled around, they got my discharge papers ready and I was finally going home! The swelling had gone significantly and I felt like a new person. I felt alive. Which, is kind of crazy because I didn’t think I felt that bad to begin with. That week I had a lot of follow up appointments and taking medications and checking my blood pressure twice a day. The swelling just kept going down even more! One morning, I woke up and my legs looked normal….normal? I thought they actually looked skinny because I hadn’t seen them not swollen since January. I can now go up and down the steps, get in and out of bed, sit, stand, man, I can do pretty much anything! It feels so great to know that I can properly take care of my child. After a week, my appointments all checked out to be good and I was able to stop my medications. I had lost a total of 36 pounds! 36 pounds!!! What?!? I didn’t even know I had 36 pounds of fluid in my legs! OH MY! Now I really wish I had a “before” picture. How insane! I joke and say that diuretics are the new fad if you want to lose weight fast. If only I lost 36 pounds in my mid section hahahahaha. I mean, I probably did lose some in my mid section but, after 9 months of a growing belly, of course I wish it was more! At this point I will take what I can get! When I first got admitted to the ER, I was the same weight as I was right before I delivered…..and I had an 8 pound baby. So….that’s when I realized something was wrong. Now we are home, the appointments are done, we are all safe. They still don’t really know what happened except that my body just freaked out from all the trauma of the delivery and fluids given. They thought it was a postpartum cardio myopathy but that would indicate that I actually have a heart problem, which I don’t. So, all in all, who knows what happened, it is a mystery we will never understand. Where do we go from here? Well, the doctors said that they are not concerned that it would inhibit a future pregnancy so that was relieving to hear. Google had said something different, which, you know Google, it always is worse case scenario. I will still need to be monitored closely if I do chose to be pregnant again. Right now we are just happy to be a family and all be healthy and together. It’s like I said before, sometimes the only medication you need is family.

And for now,

Xoxo