Roughly 2 1/2 years after giving birth to Addy, I finally feel comfortable to share my thoughts on my pregnancy and giving birth.
Warning: If you are triggered by any of this: Pregnancy, blood, bleeding, hospitals, labor, trauma, needles, preeclampsia, HELLP syndrome, giving birth, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), I recommend that you stop reading now.
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March 26, 2023 – My first positive pregnancy test! After about seven months of trying, I was feeling very discouraged but still hopeful. I took the test around 5:30 a.m. on a Sunday.
March 31, 2023 – Confirmed positive pregnancy test through my OBGYN’s office. Yay!
March 31, 2023 – We ended up telling our parents by phone within the first week of my pregnancy. The main reason is because we had a blood drive at the beginning of April, and I knew I couldn’t give blood as scheduled. Everyone was thrilled. Al’s parents were still living at their farm in Dryburg, VA. We had just been there for a visit in early March for Al’s mom’s birthday.
May 2023 – A big scare at 11 weeks along. I started bleeding and knew I needed medical attention right away. I took myself to Sentara BelleHarbour ER that morning. The staff there were absolutely wonderful. One woman, who was older, understood what I was going through and gave me the biggest hug. It helped a lot. I was diagnosed with a 1 cm subchorionic hematoma, which happens fairly often in early pregnancy. In basic terms, it’s a collection of blood between the uterine wall and the chorion, which is the outer fetal membrane. I’m glad I listened to my gut and got the attention that I needed, even though it was terrifying at the time. The baby and I were going to be fine. Phew!
End of May 2023 – We found out that we were having a girl right after we arrived at the farm in Dryburg for Memorial Day weekend. Al designed a great graphic for our Facebook announcement. So many people reached out with well wishes and congratulations. It was wonderful. Addy’s due date was December 4, 2023.
Summer 2023 – I had to start wearing compression stockings fairly early on in my pregnancy. Annoying, but I’m grateful for Amazon. I was able to get lots of fun colors and styles to make it bearable. Al was a hero for helping me put them on every single day. We learned that it was better for them to go on as soon as I got up for the day, rather than waiting until after I got up and started moving around. I also got this super comfortable, plush, full body pregnancy pillow. That was my lifesaver, especially as I got bigger.
The other annoying thing was that I would get sparkles or the feeling of glitter in my eyes, mainly my peripheral vision. It usually happened in the shower, but it wouldn’t last long, and it wasn’t consistent. This typically happens when you rub your eyes when they’re closed. I didn’t know that this is a symptom of preeclampsia.
I also took Baby Girl V to the 2023 P.E.O. Virginia State Convention! This was such a cool experience because I got to tell many close friends and sisters that I was pregnant and having a girl (a.k.a., a future sister). Also, my mom and I tolled the hand bells together at the Time of Remembrance, with Baby Girl V along for the journey. I posted this photo on June 2nd.
June 2023 – We were trying to find a good way to tell my Grandpa (97 years old at the time) that I was pregnant with his first great-grandchild. I found this shirt online and ordered it. We gave it to him on Father’s Day. He had the shirt until the very end (He died on February 16, 2026 at age 100!). I’m so glad he got to meet Addy and have a relationship with her.
August 2023 – My 35th birthday! We had a simple party at my parents’ house. My mom made key lime cake. Delicious!
September 21, 2023 – We attended Michaela and Kyle’s beautiful wedding in Norfolk, VA. This was one of the few photos that I felt comfortable with sharing during my journey. I felt beautiful in this dress from my friend Darby’s small business. I helped Al pick out his suit!
October 14, 2023 – Al’s mom hosted a beautiful and intimate baby shower at their house in Portsmouth. They had just moved in a few months earlier! It was wonderful. What I didn’t know at the time, was this was the last full weekend that I would be pregnant.
October 20, 2023 – I was so exhausted on this Friday. I knew I needed to go to my annual physical with my PCP that afternoon, but I almost cancelled it. I’m SO GLAD that I didn’t, because it saved my life and Addy’s life.
I drove from my house to the office in Suffolk, thinking that I was going to go to the appointment and then go home and go back to work at home like usual. That’s not what happened.
My PCP, a mother of two, took one look at my blood pressure and knew something was wrong. I knew it was much higher than usual. Up until this point, I hadn’t ever had high blood pressure in my life, unless I was really excited about something. At that appointment, it was hovering around 160. I didn’t know that the danger zone for pregnancy was 130. My PCP asked if she could call my OBGYN. I said yes, of course.
She came back into the room and knelt down in front of me. Considering she had been gone for about 15 minutes by then, I was getting concerned but trying to stay calm. I still remember what she said, looking me in the eyes.
“I know you drove here by yourself, but I think we need to call someone to come get you. You need to go to Labor and Delivery as soon as possible.”
I lost it, started crying immediately. I managed to call Al, but I couldn’t talk. My doctor talked for me. She explained what was happening. Al dropped everything, left work, and came to get me. I managed to pull myself together while waiting for him. I remember texting my boss to let her know of the situation, but I don’t remember much else. It only took Al about 30 minutes to get to me, but it felt like an eternity.
Sentara Norfolk General Hospital (SNGH) was wonderful. My main triage nurse, Teresita Hammond, was a rock star. My blood pressure went up to 190 while I was in triage. We overheard the nurses that I was the fifth “pre-E” patient already that day, and no one could understand what was in the water or what was happening. Up until that point, I had not known what “pre-E,” or preeclampsia, was. They also told us that I was having the baby by the end of the weekend.
I got into a room a couple of hours later. I remember being glad that I had eaten before I’d left for my annual physical, because I was so hungry and looking forward to some hot food. We asked the nurse when I could eat. She turned around and said that I couldn’t eat anything until after I delivered Addy. If I hadn’t been in a bed already, I would have fallen over. She explained that they were putting me on a magnesium drip and couldn’t eat anything for safety reasons. The only things I could have were water and ice chips until after Addy was delivered. I was horrified but understood. I was put on an IV, plus a catheter. Blood work was taken what felt like every hour. My veins were absolutely shot by the next day, bruises everywhere. I can’t say enough about the nurses and doctors though!
October 21, 2023 – I don’t think Al and I slept much. He barely left my side the entire time. When our families came to visit, they made him go get food. He left the room every time so that I wouldn’t see him eat in front of me, the perfect gentleman. He was only gone for 15-20 minutes each time. The nurses and doctors were wonderful, answering all our questions. I was stuck in bed. I remembered my childbirth class that we took at Sentara Obici Hospital a month prior, slowly realizing that my labor and delivery wouldn’t be anything normal.
That afternoon, the staff needed a decision quickly on whether or not I wanted an epidural. I learned later that my platelets were completely crashing so there was a short window on doing the epidural. It was scary, but Al was with me the whole time. It wasn’t as terrible as I thought. It worked and everything after this was virtually pain-free, except for the needle sticks for the blood draws.
The doctors and nurses told me that they were likely going to induce my labor the next morning. I don’t remember sleeping much. But I do remember hearing my angels around me – Our families, my grandmas, and others. More on that later.
October 22, 2023 – The day started very early. The doctors induced me around 12:30 a.m. – They broke my water and then the labor process started. It was quite the experience. Nothing hurt in terms of pain, but I definitely felt the movement of the contractions. In the haze of the magnesium, I was in awe at the work that my body was doing. I knew that I was going to become a mother that day, just not sure when!
Around 9:00 a.m., maybe later than that, they told me I was dilated enough to start pushing. Again, it was quite the experience. I’m amazed I didn’t break Al’s hands! The staff were amazing, plus some medical students were observing as well. While I was in labor, I clearly heard my Grandma Grace’s voice encouraging me, along with Kermit singing “Rainbow Connection.” One of the coolest things was seeing the figure of Bobby Scarboro, our longtime church janitor, smiling above me, and proclaiming his signature phrase, “Blessed By The Best!” He had died a couple of years earlier.
Al was amazing through the entire journey. He was so encouraging and by my side the entire way. I think I pushed for about an hour total. At 10:11 a.m., Adalynn Grace Vardaro entered the world! She was 4 pounds, 3.7 ounces, and 17 inches long. She was born at 33 weeks, 6 days gestation. I heard her cry, and we all cried. They cleaned her up while Al took some quick photos. They tried to put oxygen on her, and she swatted it away!
I knew she needed to go to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), but the staff let me hold her for a few minutes. Al got as many photos as he could. Nothing can describe the despair I felt when they took her away. It was gut-wrenching. I just sat there, gutted.
One of the cool things that every Sentara hospital does is they play a chime when a new baby is born! Our families were waiting for the good news, and they heard the chime!
After some time, our families came in to say hi and congratulations. I wasn’t in pain but I was tired. The only thing that was hurting was the tear down there, which they stitched up right after Addy came out. The staff kept an eye on me. I was determined to start to get back to “normal” after three days of hell. The magnesium does weird things to you – I felt like I was on fire the entire time. I’m glad I wrote things down along the way and afterward, everything from those days is foggy now.
Al went to the NICU to take photos of Addy, since I was stuck in bed for at least another day. He took photos and videos!
I was able to get out of bed and get to the bathroom for the first time since Friday. That was a huge step forward.
Later on, I was moved to a room in the antepartum unit. The staff kept a good eye on me, but I was bound and determined to get to the NICU as soon as possible.
October 23, 2023 – I was finally able to get out of bed and leave my room. Al said later that he’d never seen someone trying to will a wheelchair to move faster. I needed to see my baby. Our baby.
Addy was “a feeder and a grower” according to the NICU staff. As a NICU baby myself, I’d heard countless stories of my parents’ experience with me at Mount Sinai Hospital. Addy was also feisty, just like me. But it hits different as a parent.
One of the coolest things was one of the NICU nurses, Vinny, was one of my middle school classmates! I knew he was a nurse but I didn’t know that he worked at SNGH or in the NICU! That helped so much. At the time, I was one of five or six people who Vinny knew from school, and he had taken care of their kids.
My mom helped me take my first shower. I still needed to be monitored by the staff, but the medications I was on were helping.
While in the hospital, I was continuing to have upper right quadrant pain. The staff did an ultrasound on my liver, where they found a benign hemangioma, which is a clustered blood clot. It’s common with HELLP syndrome. HELLP is an acronym for Hemolysis, Elevated liver enzymes, and Low Platelet count.
October 24, 2023 – My doctors, during rounds at 6:00 a.m., stood in front of my hospital bed and admitted to my face that Sentara doesn’t have good data on preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. I immediately volunteered mine.
My PCP called me around 6:00 p.m. to check on me. She’d been watching my charts all weekend and was worried. I told her what happened and thanked her, because she saved our lives.
I was discharged from the hospital on Thursday, October 26, 2023. I was in the hospital for six days total. I felt the same despair when we left to go home as the day Addy was born, I wasn’t in the same space as her. But, Al went to visit her every evening after work. I was shuttled back and forth to the hospital every day to see her. We fed her, changed her diapers, and learned our new normal.
Addy was released from the hospital on October 31, 2023 – Halloween! She passed her car seat test and we took her home. It was surreal.
The next few months were both a blur and a marathon. There were days where I felt like I wouldn’t make. I didn’t experience postpartum depression, but I definitely had postpartum anxiety (PPA). Al, our parents, and my therapist, Denise, were essential. Al worked for the time that I was in the hospital, but was able to take a month off of work as soon as Addy came home.
I went back to work in January 2024. I settled into my new office space and building, as my team was preparing to move around the time I went out on leave. I left that team in April 2024 for a new role, and I’ve been a Credentialing Specialist II since then. While I miss my old colleagues, I appreciate the challenges and growth I’ve experienced on my new team. I’m also able to work from home every day now, which has helped tremendously in so many ways. I had an MRI on my liver the same month regarding my hemangioma, and everything looked good.
As for me, I’m on a daily maintenance dose of blood pressure medication. It’s the lowest dose possible, and my PCP is hoping to wean me off of it eventually. I’ve had to significantly reduce the amount of spicy food that I eat – I typically only eat one round of Volcano rolls when we go out to sushi now. Otherwise, I start to sweat and I feel my heart working harder to process it in my body. My overall blood pressure is much better now. When I successfully gave blood in April 2026 (first time in two years!), my reading was 118/74. I also learned from my eye doctor that I have nerve damage in both eyes because of how severe my preeclampsia had gotten in 2023. Thankfully, my vision hasn’t been damaged. I have yearly eye exams and everything is stable. It was another reminder of how sick I truly was by the time I got to October 2023.
Later on, I asked my PCP what would have happened if I had cancelled that annual physical. She told me, in no uncertain terms, that I would have likely gotten sicker over that weekend, my platelets would have completely bottomed out to nothing, and Al would have likely needed to call an ambulance for me to get to the hospital. My labor and delivery wouldn’t have gone as they did – She said it would likely have been an emergency C-section. I’m so glad that didn’t happen.
Addy has had her challenges, but she’s growing into a beautiful, smart, clever, and curious child. At her recent pediatrician visit, she was 35 inches tall and 29 pounds. She’s starting preschool in September 2026. We are very proud of her.
Al and I made a mutual decision when I was pregnant to not post any photos of Addy on social media. The only exception that we made was the day she was born since she was six weeks early. It made me feel better for others to know that I was okay and she was okay. We knew so many that had been praying for us!
I recently learned that the month of May is Preeclampsia Awareness Month. I’m thrilled that I chose this time to post my experiences. I want to educate everyone who will listen about preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. Most people I’ve talked to, particularly women, either haven’t heard of it or aren’t familiar with how common it is. When I was going through my journey, I was told that it occurs in 1 of 4 pregnancies (25%). Those numbers vary, especially if you are a person of color. It’s something for everyone to be aware of and share with others.
Also, I’ve been told by three separate medical professionals that it’s not medically safe for me to have another baby. That was tough to hear for quite a while. I didn’t want Addy to be an only child, mainly because I was / am an only child. However, I can’t take that risk. Plus, when Al told me that he needed me earth side, and Addy needed me, her mom, here, the desire to conceive another child virtually disappeared. It’s taken a lot of love, support, and therapy to arrive here, but I know that I’m Addy’s mom, and I’m beyond proud of that.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. This was by far one of the most challenging posts I’ve ever written. I hope my experiences will help others.
Resources
HELLP Syndrome | Cleveland Clinic
It’s a dangerous complication of pregnancy – but a new drug holds promise | NPR (February 14, 2026)
Until the next headline, Laura Beth 🙂
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