Pregnancy and high blood pressure: Part three

ann curtis By Ann M. Curtis (pictured with her daughter, Caitlin)

So the eights months, one week of count down to my daughter’s birth were over and done, and I had a beautiful little girl to hold and treasure and watch grow up.

And me? How was I doing?

How did mama fare?

Initially, not too bad. I pretty much did all my post-delivery bleeding at the hospital, and only had about three days at home (I know; I’ve heard horror stories of some moms taking as much as two weeks for their bodies to adjust). The witch hazel the nurse had me use made my episiotomy heal up in three days; I’m also a fast healer, which probably helped.

I did suffer an abdominal hernia while giving birth, which was discovered two and a half years later. The hernia was what gave me the terrible, knife-like pain I’d felt right after giving birth.

The anti-seizure medications I’d been put on to prevent an eclampic seizure during the birth—one of which was magnesium sulfate—made me feel absolutely worthless. I swear, I wouldn’t wish that medication on my worst enemy. Hot flashes of blinding white pain literally sizzled through my veins, and my eyes felt like they were burning out of their sockets.

The worst, though, was having no strength whatsoever. I couldn’t even move myself up on the bed, or get up and attend to my daughter. They’d put a catheter in, and I’ll bet that first day after giving birth that I lost almost half the water weight I’d gained those last few weeks. I’d gained forty-five pounds by the time I’d weighed in at the birthing room; within the first few days, I was within twelve pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight. Talk about instant weight loss!

And breastfeeding?

I had planned to breastfeed, but had to eventually concede it wasn’t going to happen and turned to bottle feeding instead. I had not only missed that crucial time period of bonding right after she was born (I was too knocked out from the drugs), but she was too small and too weak to suck.

Then, when I did pump and mixed my milk with the formula I fed her, she refused to drink any after the second week. We’ll never know for sure why, but our guess is that she didn’t like the taste of my medication in the milk. I was on a pretty high dose of high blood pressure meds, so that was a logical conclusion.

Back to the hospital for baby

My daughter was born in the wee hours of a Friday morning and discharged from the hospital at noon on Sunday but, because her jaundice didn’t clear up, she was right back in the hospital Monday night. After an IV in her foot for dehydration and some sunning under the bright lights overnight, she was given a bill of good health. She went home the next day, where she laid on a bilirubin blanket in the sunshine inside a clothes basket for the next few days.

Post-partum

The crying, hormonal jags hit me pretty hard, and I eventually ended up going on Zoloft for six months for post-partum. It’s awful when you’re sitting there, trying to nurse or pump, and all you want to do is cry. You don’t want to, but you can’t help it. A little here, a little there, a torrent the next time…my OB finally told me to just sit down and have one big bawl session, just get it all out. Only by that time, right when I was ready to just let ’er rip…I couldn’t. Apparently, I was all cried out!

Because of my own health problems/concerns, I didn’t get to bond with my baby—not just the bonding that breastfeeding fosters, but also the bonding between a mother and her child. That didn’t happen until about the second week we were home. I remember the exact moment. I was sitting in the rocker in her bedroom, feeding her a bottle, and there was an instant when our gaze met and locked.

Such fierce, overwhelming love flooded me, and I knew then, no matter the odds or the obstacles, we were going to be all right. My husband told me he’d been worried that I wasn’t going to bond with her; it was such a relief for him when he saw that we had. In fact, unbeknown to me, he’d been so worried he’d even talked to my OB about it.

Babes come to help

I was exhausted after giving birth, and my hormones and blood pressure were doing such strange things. My mom came to help out the first week, and a couple weeks later my mother-in-law came to stay a week—broken foot and all.

Although most of the burden of taking care of the baby still fell on me (and my husband, to a certain extent), it was nice having other women around to lean on, to ask questions of, to get moral support from—to know they’d been there, done that.

They didn’t understand what I was going through in terms of my chronic illnesses and how the delivery was affecting my body, that the tiredness I felt was more and went deeper than just the tiredness of giving birth, but they knew and could emphasize with having a baby and the huge physical and emotional toll that extracts. That, more than anything, gave me comfort.

Ann's advice to pregnant ChronicBabes (and others who are contemplating kids)

My advice to other ChronicBabes out there who are contemplating giving birth or are about to give birth: If you have someone to lean on, take them up on the offer, especially if you suffer from a chronic condition. You don’t know how the birth will go, or how you’ll feel afterwards, until the time comes.

Knowing you can rely on someone to help out while you regain your strength, that there’s someone there to help care take of the baby, will take a load off your mind. Trust me. It helps. If that person is willing, let them take over the majority of the baby duties while you sleep. This will be the one time you’ll have people willing—and begging—to help take care of the baby. Take them up on the offer while you take care of yourself.

After all, you can’t do a good job of taking care of your precious little one if you don’t take care of yourself.

About Ann:

Ann Curtis resides with her husband and daughter in Madison, Wisconsin. At the age of 29, Ann found out she had high blood pressure. Pregnancy hormones forced her to manage her (mild childhood) asthma and allergies with medication and, a few years later, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and atophic dermatitis decided to drop in as well. She has been pursuing a writing career for more years than she cares to acknowledge, and owns AC Proofing Services, for which she does manuscript assessments and editorial services. She’s currently writing a romantic suspense and working as an editor for Loose Id.

Posted: 6/8/2007 in Family

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