Why Abigail had to come early: about HELLP Syndrome and IUGR

HELLP syndrome is a variant of preeclampsia/toxemia. The symptoms I showed during my hospital stay were

• extremely high blood pressure,
• high levels of protein in my urine (showing that my kidneys were starting to fail)
• elevated liver enzymes (showing that my liver was starting to fail)
• extremely low levels of platelets - that continued to drop (in fact, dr's will not allow an epidural below 100,000 platelets for fear of stroke and clotting issues. I was at 101,000 on the morning of her birth)

The decision to induce labor was not an easy one, but one that was basically made for us as my condition worsened. Luckily, Abigail is in one of the best NICU's in the south and I'm really very happy with the care she has gotten thus far.

Abigail also had some issues that influenced the decision to give her an early birthday.  The main issue was that Abigail had IUGR (Intra-uterine-growth-restriction), meaning that she had not grown since she was 29 weeks.  So Abigail is one of the shrimpiest 32 weekers they have ever seen! For some reason (probably her smaller cord) she stopped growing right before I was admitted into the hospital - so the induction saved both of our lives.