As you can see by the pink, this is mine. And boy is there a story with this one.

so at my 20 week ultrasound appointment they found that i didn’t have any amniotic fluid and a week later (that was the *soonest* we could get in to see a specialist) my child was diagnosed with bilateral Multicystic Dysplastic Kidney Disease. That meant that she had cysts in both kidneys thereby not producing any amniotic fluid which in turn would mean her lungs would never develop. We were told at that appointment our child would not live after birth and there was a high chance of stillbirth (from cord compression).

We chose to carry on with the pregnancy for many personal reason but also because my husband was in his last semester with school and would be graduating in about 12 weeks and then we were moving.

Enter this day. I’m at home and all of a sudden i start getting TERRIBLE back pain. HORRIBLE. I was actually having to breathe through the pain and i’m a person with a pretty high pain tolerance (I used to have the periods were cramps left me on the floor withering in pain). So i called my mother and she suggested i go to the hospital to get checked for preterm labor because she said it sounded like i was in back labor.

I drove myself to the hospital because my husband was at school taking a final and so was pretty much everyone else we knew. It was in the afternoon so no late night hospital visit. I get to the “birthing center” of the hospital and tell the nurses i thought i was in labor.

They proceeded to ask me how far along i was and i said 30 weeks. THEN they looked at my funny and asked me why i thought i was in labor. I started bawling at this point because i was not ready for this and i thought i was in labor. I explained my situation and they took me to a room to hook me up to the monitors and then left me alone for 15 minutes while i cried and cried and cried.

Then the nurse comes in and unhooks me and then my PERSONAL OB comes in and says “You’re not in labor. You just strained your back. Here’s a prescription for a muscle relaxer and I have a date with my wife in 15 minutes so I have to go.”

The thing is, even though i was helping pack our apartment i never lifted a box or did anything to hurt my back. So it didn’t’ make sense to me that i ‘strained’ my back. But my doctor was in a hurry and just left me with my prescription and went out the door. (i think he thought was, my baby was going to die anyways so it didn’t matter what he gave me, which was valium).

Before i left i asked the nurse if she wanted a urine sample and she looked at me funny again but got me a cup for a sample (which they dipped and it was clean). I then made my way through the hospital to the pharmacy. On the way, because i was in so much pain i had to rush into the bathroom because i thought i was going to throw up. Then i had to wait for my prescription and drive myself home (when i could barely walk).

My husband came home from school and i was still in a LOT of pain. His parents then arrived because he was graduating the next day. My MIL told me later that the way i was acting she knew it wasn’t my back. As the night progressed the pain moved to my right side and became unbarable. around 11pm my husband asked me what i wanted to do. I told him i wanted the pain to go away. So he would suggest going to the hospital but i said no because they didn’t DO anything last time. So then he’d ask me what i want to do and i said make the pain go away! So finally around midnight we made our way to the emergency room where thankfull we got back right away.

I did end up throwing up at this point because of the pain and was just shaking. The ER doctor told me he thought i had a kidney stone and wanted to do some ultrasounds and x-rays (again, because our baby would not live they were ok with this, and i was too at this point just to find out what was wrong!).

So they did the ultrasound (which they started without any pain medication so it was pretty unbearable for them to be pushing on my kidney like that) and then 2 x-rays and then we got to wait forever in the little ER room. Thankfully i had pain meds by this point so i was able to sleep a little.

So then the doctor comes in around 3AM and tells me that there is no stone, but that i have Hydronephrosis in my right kidney. He said that my baby was putting pressure on my ureter and causing the urine to back up into my kidney, causing the swelling and pain.

He told us that they wanted to keep me overnight in the birth center for observation and my doctor would talk to me in the morning. So we go and try to get some sleep (with them coming in every hour to check on me) and in the morning my doctor comes strolling in and i just stared at him wanting to say “REALLY, i *strained* my back!??!”. So he goes over what the ER says and then proceeds to tell us that we have to induce that morning.

I just look at him. Seriously. Seriously??? I asked him if i didn’t induce if it would kill me. He said no, but that i’d be in a lot of pain. So i told him to give me a pain killer and send me home because my husband was graduating in 3 hours and we were moving in 2 days! He was kind taken back at that point and kinda tried to persuade us but i stood firm and so he prescribed me some vicadin and sent us home.

Unfortunately because of my condition i had to stay at home on the couch and was not able to attend my husbands college graduation (that we both had been working so hard for!) but instead i had to watch it on the computer from the live feed.

Then the next day was Mother’s day, that was a really fun day for me (note my sarcasm).

Then on monday we moved back to our home town. On tuesday i met with my new OB for my check up visit and to schedule my induction. The doctor wouldn’t be ‘on call’ at the hospital until the next week so we scheduled it for then, until we realized that was our anniversary so it was scheduled for TWO weeks later.

So i go home and just try to rest and prepare for the birth of our baby. I was still in so much pain i was having to take a pain pill every 4 hours to deal with it. There were a couple days i started running a fever (101 sometimes higher) and so i’d call the doctors office and talk to the nurse. She told me that because the pain killers contained acetaminophen that it can cause a slight fever (does that make sense to ANYONE else??). So it was brushed off as nothing.

Well, a week after that initial vist i get a call from the doctors office saying that the culture on my urine sample came back (my new doctor had me take a sample, part of routine and all) after it was cultured and i had a raging bladder infection. I was prescribed an antibiotic for the infection.

So i start taking the antibiotic and notice that my pain is lessening in my kidney. It lessened so much actually that i didn’t need to take my pain meds anymore. I knew it couldn’t be the baby moving out of the position since there was no amniotic fluid and our baby really couldn’t move around.

But we are the kind of people who believe everything happens for a reason and if the doctors said that i had something wrong with my kidney then i did and we kept the induction date.

And that turns into a WHOLE different story that i don’t have time to really tell but long story short, LONG induction (3 days), unsupportive doctor, Rushed pushing stage, doctor pretty much pulled our daughter out, told us she was stillborn and then she started gasping for air. He still insisted she was stillborn and wouldn’t change his mind. But like i said, that’ a whole different story and probably another quote there…

In the end, after seeing different urologists and talking with my midwives (i had plans to do a home birth with this birth, my first but then was told i had to induce so it didn’t happen) i firmly believe that i only had a kidney infection and there was nothing with the baby causing it.

The first bladder infection i ever had was at the beginning of my pregnancy and i didn’t even really realize i had an infection cause it didn’t hurt that bad. And my mom has a history of urine infections not coming up on the dip, but later showing up with they culture. So i think this was the case with me. I just didn’t know i had an infection and because the dip was clean they didn’t suspect that. The fact that i was having a fever even WITH the acetaminophen (which is a fever REDUCER) tells me that i had a really bad infection. It actually scares me because i don’t know how long i had an infection but i know there was at least a week+ that it was really bad. Who knows, i could have gone septic with the infection and no one would have caught it!

It makes me really mad that no one stopped to take the time to think about anything. I think the ‘novelty’ of having a child who was going going to live made my original OB not think straight (i kinda feel he just wanted to deliver her because it would be ‘cool’) and my 2nd OB was just listening to the original one.

Blah. Needless to say we definitely went with a midwife the 2nd time around and had a happy, wonderful home birth.