Our Family: Pregnancy and baby Brooklyn

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was starting to have some problems with my pregnancy. Back in December I was going to bed one night and I started having the most horrible pain in my right rib cage. The pain traveled up my back and put pressure on my chest and lungs. It was terribly scary as I had no clue what was wrong with me. I honestly thought I was dying. Since it happened late at night, we called the on call Dr. He was no help at all. Had no clue what it could be, so recommended we go to the ER. We were on the verge of going when all of the sudden the pain stopped. Just like that, it was over. I had a Dr appt a few days after and told my OB about the attack. He said that it could have been a gallbladder attack, but if it, was that there was nothing that could be done about it while I was pregnant. Basically I just had to pray that it never happened again. It was literally the worst pain I have ever been in.
Over the next few months I had a few more attacks, but they were luckley only 10 to 15 minute ones, and not a 3 hour one like before. They always only happened at night.
A few weeks ago now in my 34th week, right smack dab in the middle of the day I had that dreaded feeling starting in my right rib cage again. 10 minutes later I was withering on the floor in pain and crying like some crazy person. Freaked.my.kids.to.death. I called Jeff at work and told him to get home and take me to the hospital. It was a BAD one. Freaked him out too because he called 911 and a few minutes later a fire truck and ambulance and 6 paramedics were all in my house trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I didn't want to pay the $4000 fee to take a ride to the hospital in the ambulance, so I opted to have Jeff take me. And guess what happened when we got to the hospital parking lot? It stopped. Just like that. We went on up to labor and delivery where they did a stress test on the baby, but there was nothing else they could do for me. I called my DR and he ordered a ultrasound for my gall bladder the next day. Fast forward a few days to my Dr appt and he confirmed that I had a gallbladder full of gallstones. Oh lucky me. I hoped and prayed that since my C-section was scheduled for May 2nd and the attacks were usually a few weeks apart, that I would be able to make it the 3 1/2 weeks until the baby came.
Meanwhile....
I don't know if I have ever mentioned it on this blog, since it would have been almost 5 years ago now, but when I was pregnant with Maddie, during the last couple of weeks I had left, I got this intense itching all over my body. No rash, just itching. My dr chucked it up to be something that some woman get in the final stages before giving birth and basically said that I have to just deal with it. So I did. And it was awful. I luckily didn't have it return with Maxton. Well 2 days after my horrific gallbladder attack at almost 35 weeks along, the itching returned one night. I didn't sleep at all that night. I had my Dr appt the next day and mentioned it to him. He prescribed me some meds to take that might help. They did nothing. The worst part of this itch is that during the night the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet just itch and burn like you wouldn't believe. I would have to get out of bed and shuffle my feet around on the carpet and scratch my hands like mad. It was so bad and drove me to near insanity. I went from Sunday to Wednesday with a mere 2 hours of sleep at the most per night. I finally started to do a little research online and found that some woman pregnant woman can develop a liver disorder and the symptoms of said disorder fit perfectly with what I was experiencing. I called my Dr the next day and said that I was coming in for blood work and that I thought something was seriously wrong. They got me in right away and I told him everything that I had been experiencing with no relief. He agreed that it did sound like Cholestasis of pregnancy and did the proper blood work. 3 days later it was confirmed that I was a 2 in 1000 woman that develop this liver disorder. Go me! Just my luck!
With Cholestasis your automatically pushed in to the high risk pregnancy category. The odds of lots of things going wrong, including still birth after 38 weeks are doubled. So the plan was to make sure that little baby was born before the 38 week mark.We rescheduled the C-section and went in at 37 1/2 weeks to welcome our baby girl.
So on April 23rd at 10:14 am little Brooklyn Ann entered this world screaming her little head off. She was not too happy about being pulled from her nice cozy home! She was perfectly healthy and the C-section went great (No throwing up on the operating table this time!).
The recovery was the hardest for me this time. I had some "extra" work done during the c-section to ensure that Brooke is indeed our last and it added a whole lot of extra soreness.
We are all doing wonderfully now. Brooklyn has fit right in to our little family and we couldn't be happier.
More to come .......

Lets have this baby!