February 24, 2011 James Patrick Owens is Born!

At 6:32 A.M the most wonderful event happened in Mike and my life; our son James Patrick was born. He came into the world weighing in at 4 lbs. even and 16.75 inches long. He is a precious gift, who will be treasured forever!

James spent the day in the NICU, while I spent the day getting stoned. The nurse in recovery told me to "stay ahead of the pain" and make sure I press the morphine button every 10 minutes. So, as every good patient does, I listened to my nurse. Oh boy! I was gone, I couldn't have a conversation with anyone or anything for that matter, all I did was lay there and snore.

February 22-24, 2011

Because of the blood pressure spike, they decided to induce labor that morning instead of waiting until Thursday as they planned. Let me just say, it was not a fun ride to be induced. 40 hours later, the doctors decided that I was just not going to be ready to deliver naturally, and that's when they decided a c-section was the safest course of action. I was a little scared of what was to come, but was pretty sure that I didn't want to back track at all. When they told me at 3 a.m that I would be delivering via c-section, all I wanted to do was talk to Mike, but the doctors and nurses told me to 'let him sleep' during this time, and that he 'needed his rest.' Poor Mike was so exhausted, and he had no clue what was going on, my voice was weak and I had nothing to throw at him to wake him up, so asleep he stayed until the nurse woke him up around 4 a.m.

February 19-22, 2011

At this point I have been admitted to the hospital, and scared out of my mind. They worked pushing drugs for a few hours to get my blood pressure to go down from the 200s/110s down into a more manageable range. At around 10:30 Friday night, they decided that it would be best to transfer me to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The hospital in Wyandotte doesn't have nearly as good of a NICU as the main hospital in Detroit, and the doctors were worried that they would have to deliver James that night.  At this point I knew I wasn't going home anytime soon. Once I arrived at the new hospital, I had a slew of doctors and nurses around me, trying to stabilize my blood pressure, which seemed to take FOREVER! Once I was settled in, they had me hooked up to an IV of magnesium sulfate, which would help to keep me from having seizures. The medicine did its job, however it made me feel as if I was burning from the inside out. I had to stay on the 'mag' from Friday-Monday then they took me off to see what would happen. Well, unfortunately, my blood pressure decided to climb again, and they had to put me back on from Tuesday-Thursday.

February 18, 2011

This day started out so very normal for Mike and I, little did we know how abnormal it was going to turn out. We both went to work, as we did every Friday, except today, I had a doctors appointment at 4:15. Mike told me that he didn't think he would be able to leave work in time for the appointment, but he would try, and that was okay considering it was just a routine check-up. Luckily, Mike decided to leave work a bit early so he wouldn't have to miss the appointment. Once I was there, Dr. Hoprasart checked my blood pressure and protein levels, he didn't like either one and told Mike to take me directly to the hospital. I was quite scared at this point. Once I got to the hospital, I hadn't a clue what was in store for me.