As it has been almost a year since Violet's birth and I am in danger of forgetting even more than I have already, I have decided to document Violet's birth story. (I also got a little motivation by an amazing blog post by Laura) The year has also hopefully provided me with some distance so that the reliving of the story is not too traumatic!
Violet was born the weekend after Easter. We celebrated Easter early on that Saturday (April 19th) and had a lovely time.
That evening, I began to have some pretty intense itchiness (pruritis for you medical folks) of my palms and soles. I didn't think much of it but the following night it was much worse. It was bad to the point where Ted was awakened by the sound of me clawing at my palms. I vaguely remembered this being some sort of a liver problem with pregnancy so the following day I called my midwife. I relayed that I was having a lot of itching and made a point to mention that I was concerned that I may have "cholestasis of pregnancy." It was clear that the person on the phone had no idea what this meant. I, on the other hand, was pretty concerned as my quick bit of reading had revealed that the biggest problem with cholestasis of pregnancy is sudden IUD or intrauterine demise. As in, the baby dies. Horrible, and terrifying. I called on a Monday morning and by around 5pm that day had still not heard back at all. My good friend Erika is an OB resident in Ann Arbor so seeing as the work day was close to ending, I sent her a quick text to see what she thought. She responded immediately (have I mentioned that she is wonderful?) that I needed to go to triage ASAP so they could draw some labs. Truth be told, I was a little freaked out by her urgency, combined with the fact that I had heard all of NOTHING from the midwives. I called Ted and we headed to the hospital.
Our experience in triage was not the greatest. I tried to give the midwives the benefit of the doubt but Ted was decidedly not happy (and didn't exactly try to hide it). It probably did not help that none of them could even pronounce cholestasis, which does not lend confidence to them knowing much about it. Regardless, they monitored the baby (who was doing great!) and drew some labs. Lucky for us, Erika (like I said, amazing!!!!) came by even though it was around 9pm and she was still not done with her day. She whipped out the ultrasound machine to take a look and confirmed that our little one was doing well. Unfortunately, the scariest part about cholestasis is that it basically leads to a build up of bile salts which can cross the placenta, cause an arrhythmia (making the baby's heart beat abnormally), and cause sudden death. So even though the baby looked great, she would likely look great until she didn't, in which case it would be too late. The other unfortunate thing is that the only way to diagnose cholestasis is with a lab test that has to be sent to Minnesota (Mayo) and usually doesn't return for 48-72 hours. Since the baby was doing fine, we were sent home to await the results. Erika had talked to several of the high risk OBs (really, could she be any more incredible?) and they had all agreed that we should wait for the labs to return but if they were elevated, they would induce immediately. The next two nights were pretty excruciating as we waited for the test results. Any time that she wasn't moving (which as anyone who has been pregnant knows, is often)I was sure she was gone. Wednesday morning arrived and I stalked my chart (thank God for having access!) as I had been doing each day. My labs were back and my bile salts were greater than 3x the normal limit. Just as I was paging Erika, she called to let me know she was speaking to triage about what time I could come in. We decided on 3pm so Ted and I met up at home and got our things together. I tried to nap but was way too excited and nervous. To pass the time, I curled my hair (who am I???)
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