All throughout my pregnancy, my blood pressure had been around 100/60. I was surprised when, at my thirty-four-week appointment, it was around 120/90. My doctor, a calm, older man who told dry jokes, suddenly seemed on alert. He had me take my blood pressure again. It was just as high. He sat my husband and me down in his office and asked if I had heard of pre-eclampsia. I told him I’d read about it, but mostly skimmed over it because I didn’t have any of the risk factors (I was 25, not overweight, normally had low-medium BP, etc). He said, “Well, people don’t die from it anymore as long as it’s caught early.” I was sent to the hospital for more tests. There, my BP went up to something like 165/112. I took home a 24-hour urine test.

When I brought the test back, my doctor told us that everything was fine. In the next two weeks, my BP was actually pretty normal at his office. However, I had a monitor at home and it was high every time I checked it. At 36 weeks and 5 days, I hadn’t felt the baby kick all day and the home BP checker read 164/112. My best friend was nearly done with medical school, so I called her asking if it was worth calling my OB. She said “Yes.” I called him and he said I should come in to the hospital, just in case. My husband and I drove the hour to the women and babies hospital, all the while saying, “Ugh, this long drive for nothing.”

They took my urine and blood again, as well as my ever-increasing BP. Only that time, my urine was not okay. My blood pressure went above 200/120. My OB informed me that I would be induced right away. No, I could not go home. No, I could not eat. No, I could not collect $200. First came the magnesium, administered to women with severe pre-e to stop a seizure from happening. It burned my arm as it entered my veins. I scrambled to text everyone: “Dad, when you get back from your trip, you’ll be a grandpa.” “Mom, you should get up to the hospital ASAP.” “[Brother], you’re about to be an uncle. Come when you can.” Next came the pitocin.

My best friend and her husband (who is my husband’s best friend) came. They brought a laptop and we watchedFuturama together. We let them go home. My husband and I watched an episode of TNG. I didn’t feel any contractions. I was panicking. I had thought I was ready to be a mother, but I was not. The nurse told me to get some sleep. I lay there with a BP cuff wrapped around one arm and an IV in the other arm. A fetal monitor was wrapped around my mid-section. The BP cuff checked my BP automatically every fifteen minutes. The IV fluids and the pre-e made me have to pee every fifteen minutes. I would have to unplug myself, then pee in a container so they could continue testing it. I did not get any sleep.

I had planned to have my dad, my mom, and my husband in the delivery room. And then my OB broke my water. After that, the contractions started immediately. Dad was out of state, on vacation with my step mom. I kicked Mom (and everyone else) out of the room. The pain was bad, but I would get breaks in between contractions. My OB asked if I wanted to go ahead and order my epidural. I told him it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t handle it, and he told me that then was the time to order it. I listened to him. Soon after that, the contractions were unbearable. I remember lying on my side, screaming. I wasn’t screaming words, just, “OWWWWWWW! AHHHHHH!” Then they told me I might not be able to have an epidural.

They had lost my blood cultures. I needed good test results to be able to get the epidural. The anesthesiologist let me have one anyway, since my previous ones had been good. The magnesium, meanwhile, made it so I saw double and could not keep my eyes open completely. I threw up a lot. While she gave me the epidural, I threw up from the pain of the contractions. Getting the epidural didn’t hurt at all. Within thirty minutes, give or take, most of the pain was gone. I was able to sleep for about an hour. Had I not gotten that hour, I don’t think I could have given birth. It was time to push.

The only people in the room were the doctor, the nurse, my husband, and me. There were no stirrups, like in movies. My doctor would encourage me to push during contractions. He was an amazing coach. My husband had to give me ice chips between every push because my mouth was so dry. After fifty-two minutes of pushing, my son was born. At first I was told I wouldn’t be able to do skin-to-skin because he was a premie; then they said he wasn’t so much of a premie that I couldn’t, but that they’d have to do some extra inspecting before I could hold him. He was five pounds, one ounce. The doctor stitched me up as they checked him over. Med students ogled him. When they brought him to me, I asked if he was okay. I had never seen a baby that small. He didn’t look natural; he was too small. My doctor immediately told me that he was perfectly fine. That’s when he told me that his wife had had pre-e and that his daughter had been born at just over five pounds as well. He added that she’s now an Ivy grad. He told me that it wasn’t my fault, and that pre-e babies were generally completely healthy babies. I realized why he had seemed so alert in his office.

My son had wavy black hair, black-blue eyes, big lips, and surprisingly tan skin. We tried to breast feed and he latched on like a pro. Everyone came in to take pictures. They had to take my baby away because he had low blood sugar. After that, the nurse said they would have to check my bleeding, which involved a sort of pumping on my stomach. It hurt worse than labor. I screamed. They told me my brother was extremely upset by the sound of my screaming. He both wanted to run in and save me and to run away. I was bleeding too much, I had passed a clot the size of a grapefruit, so they had to do more pumps than they had told me they’d have to do. I begged them not to. I screamed more. Finally they said they were moving me to a room where my husband and I could sleep. Only, I couldn’t make it to the wheelchair. When I stood up, I fell down, threw up, and nearly blacked out. Because of the magnesium, my vision was even worse than before. They had to pick me up to set me in the wheelchair. They tried to get me to pee and threatened another catheter. I couldn’t pee, I just threw up and begged them to let me sleep on the floor. My doctor ordered them to not give me a catheter. Then, they pumped on my stomach some more.

I did not see my son that night. They kept saying, “Maybe in an hour. His blood sugar is too low. In an hour it might be up to normal.” But it never was. My husband went to visit him and brought back pictures, which I stared at, in disbelief.

My doctor told them to only check my BP every two hours so I could get some sleep. I did sleep, some. The next day, I felt crazy. Suicidal. Out of it. Not myself. I still saw double and couldn’t hold my eyes open. I couldn’t walk, so I had to pee in a bed pan. And because of the fluids in the IV and my pre-e, I had to pee often. I would call the nurse after peeing in my bed pan for an hour or two. I would sit in my own pee until I thought it was full enough to call her. By the time my doctor visited me, I told him I felt weird. He asked me how my son was, and I couldn’t communicate anything to him. I remember saying, “He’s, um, he has, um, his sugar is, um, his sugar is bad.” The doctor said, “His blood sugar is low?” “Yes,” I said. “That’s it.” I had been hallucinating somewhat, mostly that the bed was rocking on a sea. I told my doctor, “I feel really, really weird. Like, whoa. Like…” I trailed off as I felt like I couldn’t feel my body anymore. He told the nurse to cut off the magnesium early. A few hours after she did so, I started feeling better. By the next day, I didn’t feel suicidal anymore. But I was anemic from all the blood loss. And my son had to stay in the hospital an extra night because had failed a test. The test was supposed to show that he either had an infection or was stressed. It turned out he was just stressed; probably from a traumatic birth, and from the magnesium, and from them poking his foot with a needle every hour. As my husband and I left the hospital without our son, we cried. We cried a lot. I kissed the picture of him before I went to bed. I woke up the next morning before my alarm went off.

I still couldn’t walk, really. My vagina hurt too much and I was weak from anemia. My husband wheeled me up to pick up our son. They told us that his blood sugar was okay, he had the “best jaundice rating” the nurse “had ever seen.” He was only down to four pounds, fifteen ounces, which meant he had lost a lot less weight than the average baby. In short, though he was tiny, he was healthy. They did not have pants small enough to fit him, so he wore two shirts; one shirt went over his legs like pants. I couldn’t hold him for very long because I was too weak.

We drove him an hour home. He slept the whole way while I stared at him and took pictures. He’s seven and a half months old now. I still stare at him and take too many pictures. He’s healthy, smart, beautiful. His first word was “Mama.” He’s sleeping right now and I miss him. I miss him when he goes down for the night. In the morning, he will nurse before I have to get up for work and school, and we will have just a little bit of time to snuggle. That will be the happiest part of my day.