[bravos1]

DB, great thread!

I have 2 kids now, but the first is something I will NEVER forget! My wife became preclamptic very early on in her pregancy and was on total complete bed rest at week 28.

The doctor had already decided to take her 2-3 weeks early if all was going well. At 34 weeks, we go for a checkup and the doc tells us to go to the hospital and check-in. She told us that she wanted he in the hospital for the remainder of the pregnancy. My wife and I look at each other and and are like. great, 3+ weeks in a hospital even before the baby comes. We end up running home to pick up the "over-night" bag we had already packed and headed to the hospital. I was going to return later and pack some more things. We get to the hospital and they tell us to check-in at Labor and Delivery. We're like WTF? We're not having the baby yet... we're just checking in until the doc decides it is time.

They tell us they have a room in L&D for us, so we comply. We find out shortly after that the doc had changed her mind and planned on delivering the baby in a few days. We get settled in and the nurse takes my wifes BP (185/105ish) and is concerned. They give her magnisium to help and start the enduction. We had now been in the hospital for only about 1 hr! Through the night my wife got progressively more and more sick and her BP kept rising. They had the BP machine set to take a reading evey 5 minutes, yet they wanted my wife to get some sleep.. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Her BP reached a max of about 210/120 (at which I started freaking out!) She had multiple nurses and docs checking on her during the night and every time the BP machine was about to take a reading, I would whisper in my wifes ear that is was coming. If I did not do this, she would totally freak out when it started. So there I am from about midnight till 6am whispering "OK, there gonna get a BP reading now" every 5 minutes and I had been holding off on taking a leak for about 3 hours now!

6am rolls around and my wife's doc walks into the room looking like a trainwreck. She had been up much of the night talking to the L&D nurses and on-call docs at regular clips.

I quickly make a bee-line for the restroom and am back in like 2-3 minutes and they are already wheeling her in for an emergency c-section as there is some concern that she could stroke out. So I begin to quickly don a gown, cap, and booties. The doc begins to scrub-in and has me turn on the water as she can't get it to work!!! I say something along the lnes of.."OK, I can take care of this, you do the hard part in there".. she comes back with.. "Don't worry, this is the hard part" and gives me a big smile. My wife's doc is awesome! We go into the OR and the baby is out in what seems like 30 seconds. My daughter, even at 35 weeks, is pretty strong, but they rush her off to the NICU after a few seconds of bonding for observation. My daughter staed in the NICU for 9 days before she could go home. She was 4lbs-6oz and 18in at birth.

My second was born 15 months later (not planned to be so soon) and my wife had a repeat C since the births were so close. The second pregnacy went much better and my wife did not have hardly any issues with preclampsia.

My kids are now 4.5 and almost 6 and are so friggin great!