Lycia's story

Hi. My name is Lycia Rettig.

A little over a year ago, I gave birth to my daughter Emily. She was delivered via C-section at 28 weeks, weighing in at 2 pounds .03 ounces. I had been having a perfect pregnancy up until 11 hours before Emily was born. I never showed any signs of pre-eclampsia.

Just before I went to bed on March 10, I started feeling a little funny. My husband, Ben and I, had gone out to dinner to a restaurant we had never eaten at before. I thought my dinner was bothering me. About 12:30 a.m. on March 11, I woke up feeling extremely nauseated and had a headache with such extreme pain I couldn't believe it. I was getting up to go to the bathroom when I started vomiting uncontrollably.

I finally made it to the bathroom where I lost control and urinated on myself. Once I was able to stand, I changed out of my nightgown and went back to bed in the guest room. My poor husband was left to clean up the messes I had made. The rest of the story is as it has been told to me as I only remember bits and pieces of it.

At about 5:30 a.m., Ben woke up to me hitting him. He thought I was dreaming and tried to wake me up. When he couldn't wake me, he turned on the light and saw that I was having seizures. He immediately called 911 and the paramedics came. They immediately put me on magnesium sulfate and rushed me to our local hospital.

Once the emergency room doctors stabilized me, they sent me up to labor and delivery. The doctors there performed an ultra sound to make sure the baby was okay. I came to briefly at this point, but only remember hearing words, but not seeing anything. At that point, my blood pressure was 170 over 110 and there was protein in my urine. I also had swelled severally. The doctors determined that my baby would have to be delivered as soon as possible, since they could not predict when the seizures might happen again.

The Neonatal intensive care unit at our local hospital was only a level one and the baby would have to be in a level three since it was going to be so early. They wanted to send us to the new hospital by helicopter, but the weather was too bad for that, so they sent us via ambulance. I came to again in the ambulance long enough for the nurse and I to discover we were neighbors. Ben told me that once we reached Alexandria hospital, they rushed me off to surgery to deliver the baby. He was pulled aside by a nurse to sign admitting papers and didn't even get a chance to kiss me good-bye.

I have a vague recollection of the doctors telling me they were going to put a tube down my throat, but that's it. My next memory is of Ben telling me that we had a beautiful baby girl. I did not get to see Emily until the evening of March 12 as I was still pretty sick from the eclampsia. I was finally wheeled up to the NICU on a stretcher so that I could see my daughter. At that point, we named her Emily Nicole.

Emily had all of the normal complications of a premature birth, but never developed any infections or anything out of the ordinary. She came home from the hospital 69 days later on May 19th - three weeks before her actual due date.

Emily is now a thriving one year old and other than being on the small side, has completely caught up developmentally to her peers. Ben and I have decided not to have any more children because of the risks to my health, but are blessed with our Emily.

Lycia Rettig