HELLP - The dramatic arrival of Mattias Jack

Well here is my little story… took a while to cut and paste it here!

The last week of pregnancy baby was still breech and I had developed severe heartburn in the evenings so wasn’t getting much sleep. That good proper oh-my-gosh-I’m-dying-of-a-heart-attack heartburn, as opposed to the milder acid reflux heartburn I’d been having for a few months. Plus being sick a few times.

So Friday 9 January I headed to bed early and at 2 am my waters broke. Because he was breech and not engaged I rung the maternity ward and they sent a midwife and an ambulance (I had been told very strictly by the midwife and doctor that if my waters broke I had to LIE DOWN and STAY LYING DOWN - so I did). The midwife did an examination on my living room sofa to check he if he was engaged and if the umbilical cord had come out first (he wasn't, it hadn't), and I went off to hospital on a stretcher in the ambulance. Thankfully it was a clear night and the snow had melted!

At the hospital I went straight into a birthing suite and got hooked up to various monitors for the baby’s heart and my contractions (which hadn’t started) and had some blood tests taken because of the increased c-section risk with a breech baby.

Over the next five hours things got interesting.

After an hour or so the contractions started and quickly got quite intense. I thought I was such a wimp as I was only one centimetre and they hurt so so much I couldn’t even remember how I was supposed to breathe. And I had to stay lying on my back to whole time - all I could do was hold Mr T's hand. Eventually I asked the midwife to check if he was engaged yet so I could get up and move around and she said I was six centimetres! Such a relief that I wasn’t a wimp but had gone from one to six in one and half hours.

While this was going on the blood tests came back with some funny results. The first my platelet count was 50, the next 40 and the last 39 - it is supposed to be over 150. This means there was a high risk of bleeding. At some stage another test was done which showed that I had something called HELLP syndrome - H=Hemolysis (the breakdown of red blood cells), EL=Elevated Liver Enzymes, LP=Low Platelet count. HELLP only happens in 0.2 to 0.6 percent of all pregnancies and it is often linked to pre-eclampsia, but I never had that.

Having read more about it now the “heartburn” I had was a symptom, but as most of the symptoms (tiredness, oedema) are just a part of pregnancy it is difficult to pick up. The only treatment for HELLP is to get the baby out as soon as possible. Because it is so rare we had to wait for the doctor to do some reading and call some other doctors before they could make a decision. It was decided that if the baby could be delivered in less than an hour to do it naturally (they are not too keen to do a c-section on someone with a low platelet count). She gave me an exam and I was now nine and a half centimetres so she briefly considered continuing naturally as I had dilated so quickly it could have been fast.

However, although I was ready for the pushing bit, breech babies tend to take longer so the risk to my life was too high and it was decided to do a c-section. Because of the bleeding risk they didn't want to give me a spinal anaesthetic so I had a general. About five minutes after they made the decision I was asleep and he was born on Saturday 10 January at 6:49 am weighing 3,765grms/8.3lbs and was 50cm long. And he got 10 out of 10 on his AGPAR score, so he was absolutely fine. He got a quick check and then went to his Pappa and they got to have four hours together before he came down to intensive care to meet Mum.

The whole experience was quite surreal and it is hard to get my head around how sick I was. The doctor was very happy with how things went and felt that she had made the right decision, and has said that I am quite capable of doing it naturally "next time" as the actual labour went very well. She said I could be proud of how well I did and that I got right to ten centimetres without painkillers (solely because it happened so fast and hurt so much I didn’t think to ask! Though once I knew it was a c-section I kept asking how soon I would go to sleep – what is the point of nasty contractions if you can’t use them! I remember the last contraction very distinctly, I was strapped down by my arms, legs and tummy and had such a strong pushing contraction, Mr T heard me wailing in the next room and I had a sore ankle a few days later which I think was from twisting and pulling against the straps.)

On about day three (I think - is all a bit hazy) a doctor came in and said he wanted to feel my back, which I thought was a bit strange, then he said he needed to feel the angel wings. He said that a mistake was made and so the lab technician did a test that they never do on women in labour and that was the test that showed I had HELLP. On the last day we were there a doctor came into our room by accident - it was the doctor who had tried to turn the baby before Christmas and who we had discussed doing a breech birth with. When he saw it was us he came in and had a chat and the look of shock and fear in his eyes when he talked to us was very sobering.

So that is my birth story. But most importantly we have an amazing baby boy and we are so so happy. And of course it goes without saying but I'll say it anyway, Mr T was very brave and strong and an incredible support and is very happy he got to leave the hospital with both a wife and a baby.