Let me start out with being that I've always been an athlete. I've been doing and or playing sports since I was 3 yrs. old. I know crazy, right? Being in sports when I was as young back then as made me appreciate today the need for exercise and the love of sports.
My whole life I've been involved in some sort of sport until my third year in college. I played collegiate soccer, but stopped after having spinal meningitis and having three ankle surgeries. It was hard to give it up since I had been playing since I was 5, but I felt that I needed to. So I just concentrated on finishing school and graduated in 2003.
I noticed after I stopped playing and being active that my fitness level and energy changed. It was like a depression of some sort. I've never not been active or playing something. This was hard to adjust. I slowly noticed that I had packed on the pounds. Ugh, I say. I graduated in August 2003 and got married in November 2003. My heaviest was in 2005 and 2006 when I was wearing a size 12/14 for a 5'4" frame. That is not good and it is unhealthy to be that way.
I tried to get pregnant, but that didn't happen for a while. In fact, we had to go to a fertility specialist. Are you kidding me that I had to go through this? I knew some women couldn't have children, but never thought it would be. We thought about adopting if it got to that point, but financially we decided against it and would have been fine just having our two Yorkies, Ace and Abbie. I was really upset that at age 25 I had to go a doctor, but that there were younger ones getting pregnant like it was nothing. After using a round of shots and Clomid, I became pregnant in 2005. It was a miracle and John and I were so blessed. I didn't really have an easy pregnancy. I was sick almost the entire time. Then came one weekend that was full of happiness or supposed to be you would say. One of my best friends threw me a shower on Saturday. My whole body was so swollen that my flip flops looked like they were still on after taking them off. Then on Sunday evening, we had our tour of the hospital with our Lamaze class. The nurse (Angie) that was showing us around the floor started screaming. Everyone in the group didn't know what was going on. She told other nurses to come here and look at her! Look at who we were all wondering? Then she walked up to me and pointed at my feet and hands. She said you need to call your doctor to schedule an appointment for tomorrow. The rest of the night John and I were freaked out a little. So I call my doctor on Monday to schedule an appointment, but she tells me they are booked and if I can come on Tuesday. So I go to work on Tuesday (when I was working full time) and tried to stay positive. I left early to go see the doctor and was a nervous wreck the entire time driving there. So I get to my appointment and wait for them to call me back. The first thing they normally did when they called me back was check my blood pressure and weight. The lady took my blood pressure and her eyes looked puzzled. So she took it again and again. With the look on her face getting more worried, she told me to relax. Relax? What? It is a little late for that. She told me the number of the room to go to. As I sit there and wait for my doctor to come in, everything is going through my mind. Not once through this whole pregnancy has the nurse taken my blood pressure that many times. Not once have I had any blood pressure problems. I could not figure out what is going on. For what felt like an eternity, the doctor came in. She looked kind of puzzled. What came out of her mouth next felt like my world was crashing down. She told me that my blood pressure was sky high and I was going next door to the hospital to get admitted. That they (her and the high risk doctor) were going to monitor me there. Now I start fully breaking down. I was there all by myself. My doctor told me to just sit there for a little bit until they got all the paperwork together. My husband was still at work and the only other person I would want to talk to is my mom. I call her immediately and can barely talk because I'm hysterical. She told me to calm down and that she was leaving work and wanted to know the full details of what was going on, where would I be, what would I need etc. She is the greatest. So I walk next door and got admitted. I called John and he asked if he needed to leave work and I told him no, but I sure wanted him to be there. The high risk doctor comes in and starts talking to me explaining everything. They were going to monitor the protein in my urine and see what levels it was at. I had to collect my urine each time so they could track it. Now it's Thursday morning. My mom comes early before she heads to work because she knew the doctor would be there. My dad is already sitting there because he likes to be at everything at least 2 hrs before and because he is a nervous wreck. John wasn't there yet, but was coming. My breakfast just got delivered and guess what? The doctor came in and said I couldn't eat it because I was going downstairs to go to the delivery room. Wow. We all just sat there in shock. She told me that I have an hour to get ready and take a shower if I wanted and they would be back to come get me. She then leaves and I just start crying. My mom consoles me and tells me that this is something they need to do and it wasn't getting any better. So she starts to get all my stuff together and my stuff to take a shower. I start running the water for the shower and just stand there. I get in and just bawl my eyes out. I could not believe this was happening and that I was not full term. So I go downstairs and they start hooking me up to all these monitors explaining what each was. They have to induce me and give me medicine (Pitocin). After all day of lying there, the doctor came in and said that we would continue on Friday because it was going to be a long day and I needed my sleep. So come Friday early morning around 5:30 a.m., the doctor came in and decided she was going to break my water to speed up things. I ended up having two epidurals because the first one didn't take. I was screaming in pain and everyone couldn’t figure out why. My nurse that day was older and set in her ways. I was throwing up while having contractions. I wanted to push and she didn't want me to. So I do my first push in which my mom and my husband had to help out with since they were the only ones in the room. It was crazy in there and they did not want to help this nurse because they had no idea what to do. The nurse told them to push down my legs and they did that, but then got yelled at because they were no supposed to be holding down my legs. LOL. They were supposed to be holding my legs in the stirrups. So then doctors and nurses coming running in panic. What is going on in here? My doctor told me to get on all fours and maybe push out that way. So there went my second push. They were still running in everywhere, but some had to leave because the woman next to me was worse off. So they lay me back on my back. The doctor is now yelling, what is her blood type? She is hemorrhaging. She tells me that I need to get him out this next push and that there is not enough time to prep for a c-section. She said he wouldn't make it if they prepped me for a c-section. It is total chaos in the room. He is now in distress and I'm not doing any better either. So she asks me if I can do it. I'm looking at John and my mom in total shock. With me being a swimmer I could hold my breath. So on the third push, out came a beautiful little boy name Cade born 5 weeks early along with my placenta. The nurses whisked Cade away. We kept waiting for him to cry, but he never did. I want to see him and hear him cry. Why is he not crying, I asked? Cade was then turning blue. The nurses ended up doing CPR on him for about 2 minutes or so because he couldn't breathe since he swallowed a blood clot. I did not know this was happening at the time. So my first look at Cade when they let me hold him, he was black and blue. It was horrible. John and my mom had no idea the extinct of everything that was happening or that had happened. I was so out of it due to all the medicine. Needless to say, Cade never went to the NICU which was amazing by itself. I couldn’t breastfeed because of all the medicine and magnesium. After all the problems with me having pre-clampsia, hemorrhaging, protein in my urine, etc. I was able to actually hold Cade longer than 20 seconds on Saturday. Friday, I pretty much slept the whole day due to me being out of it. The nurses told my mom to go buy build-a-bear clothes because Cade was a preemie and needed some clothes to fit him. He left the hospital weighing 4 lbs 15 oz.
After that long of a story it goes back to my start of this post. I look back on all the pictures when I was pregnant with Cade and afterwards and I look huge. I know some may say I didn't, but deep inside I was completely humiliated with the way I looked. I couldn't believe where I let my body go to. It was embarrassing and I didn't even want to even step outside. As I looked at the pictures of me at my heaviest, I swore that I would never get back to that again. Sometimes you have to hit a low in order to succeed and to be able to grow.
A Chic Mommy
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