A Crazy Entry into the World—Probably Fitting for a Child of Mine!

Wow—what a 48 hours we’ve had! Kristin began to have chest and upper back pain Saturday night around 6, which persisted through the night and grew progressively worse throughout the day Sunday. As of Sunday night at 10 she was literally floored—exhausted from pain, crying, just miserable—which, coming from Kristin, showed she was bad off. We talked to some close friends who are doctors, as well as a third call to the OB who was “on call”. All 3 said to come into the ER and run some tests to see what was going on, with speculation that her gall bladder was the likely culprit.


As we drove to ER at 11 last night, Kristin tried to talk me out of it. “I’m fine, this is crazy—I’m getting better…This is going to be nothing and we’re going to look dumb for going in…” If I hadn’t talked to our friends I would have turned back—I was tired too!

We were in the ER treatment area for about 3 hours, watching TV and hoping to go home soon. Tests came back “yes, gall bladder” then “well, something else is weird” and “okay, we don’t know, we’re taking you upstairs to stay overnight”. As they did some of these I watched the fetal monitor indicate multiple contractions, but this was normal for a due date two weeks away, and Kristin couldn’t even feel them. So, my little ray of hope that we might come home with Halle was gone—we were sure that we were staying here just for a stupid gall bladder!

We were placed in the labor and delivery wing, which we thought was just because she was so far along. When we met the OB, however, he informed us of a little different twist. To paraphrase: “It took us a while to figure out what was going on, and it’s a very, very uncommon thing call HELLP Syndrome, and there is only one treatment—We have to get the baby out NOW.”

We didn’t know what to say…Both of us were shocked, and it didn’t take long before the last 34 hours and this news took its toll on Kristin and she began to breakdown emotionally (obviously totally understandable, who wants to be cut open?!). However, by God’s grace we had a great OB and great anesthesiologist, who gave us time alone and gave us encouraging words. They took amazing care of us, and brought us through the process. Kristin was great—after that surge of emotion we talked about the truth of everything, and embraced the reality that God was sovereign over our situation. She was anxious going into surgery only because of the severity of the situation (general anesthesia, etc), but was content with not being able to have a natural birth.

Maybe I’ll write more about the emotions of everything later after I process some—we were so shocked and exhausted it was hard to truly enjoy and appreciate Halle. I did have an awesome 5 minutes or so with her in the O.R. as they were sewing Kristin back up. But, we had more trouble in the recovery room as they couldn’t stabilize Kristin’s vital signs, and I had to ask them to take our baby girl away so I could be with her mother. Thankfully, around 9 a.m. we were in a room and could begin to relax.