My story about pregnancy and fifths disease

25 weeks pregnant...the day before I got sick!

My pregnancy and birth story for Cruz are something i’ve really been wanting to write about....so here it goes.  On Thursday, May 17th, in my 25th week of pregnancy, I had a student come into my classroom with a small red rash on his face.  My initial thought was “it has to be fifths disease”.  I tend to worry way more than the average person, especially when I am pregnant so I thought that I am most likely just overreacting but let me send my student to the nurse.  The student was sent back to my classroom with a note saying “looks like fifths disease”. Well, that was the end of it for me. I became a complete mess.  I walked up to the nurses office and asked for this one student to be sent home. Sure enough, his mom picked him up, took him to the doctors and there it was confirmed for sure, he had fifths disease. It was right then that I had this absolutely horrible feeling about my unborn baby.  I knew from my first pregnancy, that I was not immune to fifths disease. For those of you who do not know, once you get fifths disease, you will not get it again. Similar to the chicken pox.  What you also might now know, is that if a fetus winds up contracting fifths disease in utero, they will most likely go into congestive heart failure and in most cases, the fetus will die.

Knowing all of these things about fifths disease and the possible harm it could have on my unborn baby, I walked up to my school office and cried my eyes out.  I was told over and over again “you will be fine, you are in your 2nd trimester. The baby will be fine”.  But, I really thought something bad was going to happen.  I called my doctor right away, went in to get blood work on Friday, and it came back negative saying, I did not have fifths disease.  I was a little relieved until Monday came when another student  walked into class with the same rash. Then Tuesday, then Wednesday. I had a total of 6, yes 6 kids in my classroom with fifths disease. I asked for my boss to send me home, which I was then told to call my doctor and that he would have to write me out.  Everyone including my doctor told me I would be FINE!

A week later was Memorial Day weekend. I had enjoyed a really nice weekend on the beach with my family.  On Memorial Day, May 28th, I was sitting on the side of the road watching the Memorial Day Parade in EHT.  Once the parade was over, I began feeling really ill. I went to my in-laws house where I winded up throwing up, got the chills and had a fever.  I went home, called my doctor and told him I thought I had sun poisoning from being at the beach all weekend. My doctor told me to drink plenty of fluids and get my rest, so that’s what I did.  When I tell you, the chills that I got from this so called sun poisoning were like nothing I had ever experienced in my life.  My entire body shook so intensely.

I was sick all day Monday, but was feeling a little better on Tuesday morning, so I went to work.  The work day went well and after work, I had a maternity photo session planned.  I finished my maternity session around 7p.m. and once I walked in the door, my chills returned, just as bad as they were the day before.  On Wednesday, I woke up and felt just as sick, so I stayed home from work and called my OBGYN and went to see my family doctor where I was told “it’s just a virus, it has to run it’s course”.  Keep in mind, both doctors knew that I had been exposed to fifths disease.  On Thursday,  I was feeling better so I went back to work. Thursday night, I laid in bed and fell asleep. Around 11 p.m., I was woken up by these horrendous chills again.  It was then that I called my OBGYN and I requested that I go to the maternity ward and get some fluids because I clearly couldn’t kick whatever “virus” I had.

I called my mom to come over to my house to lay with Chase as Matt took me to the hospital.  While I was in the hospital, they gave me IV fluids and drew my blood.  An hour later is when my whole life came crashing down.  I hear the nurse out in the hallway talking to my doctor and she said “her hemoglobin is 5.8 and her white blood cells are 1.7.”  I knew what the hemoglobin count meant because I struggle with a low hemoglobin. A hemoglobin of 5.8 was extremely bad.  I did not know what a 1.7 white blood count meant though, except I figured it couldn’t have necessarily been a good thing.   As soon as I heard the nurse hang up, I called out to her and said is my white blood count bad? Her response was “we have never seen a white blood count number so low here at Mainland hospital.”  She proceeded to tell me that my platelet count was at 74 and that my bone marrow and red blood cells have shut down completely.  Well that was it for me. My mind started wandering all over the place. Do I have leukemia? Do I have another disease? Fifths disease never crossed my mind at this moment.  From what I had read, fifths disease didn't affect children or adults in this way, just mostly fetus's.   Matt and I sat there for a couple of hours googling low white blood counts and just made ourselves more nervous.   In the meantime, the nurse told me that my doctor would be in to see me first thing in the morning as well as the high risk doctors.

Around 3 or 4 in the morning, I sent Matt home because I didn’t want Chase to wake up without either one of us being home in the morning.  Chase had fallen asleep before we left and I thought he would have been a mess to wake up without us.  I obviously didn't get much sleep in between nurses coming in often to check on me and just the anxiety and nerves from wondering what could be wrong with me.  Later that morning, I called my in-laws to tell them what happened and they rushed up to the hospital along with my parents, Matt and my brother and sister-in-law.  My male nurse walked into my room with a cordless phone and said "Dr. Chang would like to talk to you". If any of you know Dr. Chang, you know he's a complete jokester and makes light of situations.  This phone call was the total opposite.  Dr. Chang told me that I was in critical condition and that they had to transfer me to Cooper Hospital right away.  The tears starting rolling out of my eyes.   Cooper hospital?! This must be serious if I have to go to Cooper.  A few minutes later, the high risk doctor by the name of Dr. Khandelwal came into my room like a bat out of hell.  She had a bunch of gowns, masks, gloves and hats and started throwing them at my family telling them "put these on and do not go near her. She is in critical condition and cannot be exposed to any germs". The words she said after that were the worse words I could have ever heard. Ever!  She continued to say "Julie is in critical condition and she could die!!".  The doctors bedside manner was not very professional nor was she sensitive to anyone's feelings.  Right then and there, I started crying again and alls I could think of is that I need to write a living will. Who will take care of Chase when I die? What will Chase be like without a mommy. Ugh these memories choke me up.

Not long after the high risk doctor came and left, Dr. Chang came into my room all dressed from head to toe in the same gear that everyone else was told to dress in.  His words will stick with me for life. He said "Julie I am very scared for you. Worse case scenario is that you would die from this. We aren't sure what is going on but your entire system is shutting down. When you get to Cooper hospital they will probably do a bone marrow biopsy." After telling me this, he gave me his cell phone number and proceeded to tell me to please call him when I find any information out.

He left the room and the time seemed to just freeze for a little while we waited for the ambulance to come and pick me up.  In the meantime, Dr. Chang called me on the phone and said "I'm really worried about you. Please make sure that Cooper hospital checks your blood levels again before they do a bone marrow biopsy. I would never wish that on you."

Minutes later, the ambulance drivers came and picked me up. This time, I had to get dressed up from head to toe in gear so that I wouldn't be exposed to anything as I was taken in and out of the hospitals.  Luckily they let my mom drive up in the ambulance with me. Although she was in the front seat, it was nice knowing she was there.  When I arrived at Cooper, they wheeled me into a room on the labor and delivery wing.  Within a few minutes, I had about 8 doctors and nurses in my room.  I remember it seemed so much more laid back than at Mainland.  Mainland's way of dealing with it was in complete panic, where at Cooper, they were very calm and said "don't worry, we see numbers like this all the time. We will figure it out". It was then that the infectious disease doctor and OB doctors said "we heard you were exposed to parvovirus (Fifth's disease). If we had to put money on it, we would say this is what you have". The infectious disease doctor and his students then took a flashlight and looked over my entire body closely for any kind of rash. Remember how I said I got really bad sunburn? Well I had "sunburn" on my shins which they said was most likely a rash from fifths disease.

Unfortunately, the test for fifths disease takes about 4-5 days to get back. I spent the entire weekend in the hospital. It was my very first time being away from Chase and it was horrible. Because I didn't want Chase to feel uneasy about things, I sent Matt home on Saturday morning so that he could be with Chase.  I was put in a quarantined room down the hall in case I had fifths disease. They needed to keep me quarantined because I was on the maternity floor and IF I did have fifths disease, I could possibly spread it to other pregnant women.  Needless to say, anyone who stepped foot into my room had to be gowned, masked and gloved, including doctors, nurses, friends and family.  It was quite interesting considering I couldn't see the faces of any nurses or doctors.  On Saturday and Sunday, I had my blood work done a few more times.  I was being closely watched for my hemoglobin because the doctors were thinking I would need a blood transfusion. They would constantly ask me if I was feeling light headed or if I had blurry vision.  I definitely didn't feel good, and had to hold on to things when I was standing up, but the last thing I wanted was a blood transfusion during my pregnancy.

Rachel came to visit me...this is the outfit everyone had to wear :) 

On Sunday, my blood work had slightly increased as far as the hemoglobin, platelets and white blood cells. But, I was not producing red blood cells yet.  I had a nurse come to my room all covered up and as she was gowning up outside the window, I sat up and waved to her.  She then came into my room and said "you are the patient they transferred up from Mainland?" I answered yes.  She then proceeded to tell me that she was the one who took the phone call about the transfer on Friday afternoon. The phone call she received was that the patient coming up was in critical condition and with the numbers they gave her for my blood work, she said she expected me to be unconscious when I arrived.  She then said that she left work right after taking the phone call and said to her co-workers, "good luck with the patient coming up, she sounds like a doozy". HAHA. This made me laugh only because I didn't FEEL as bad as they made it seem like I should have been feeling. :)

On Monday, they decided to let me go home in hopes that what I had was fifths disease. They expected the test results to come back within a few days, so they sent me home on strict bed rest and told me if my test for fifths disease came back negative, I would be sent right back up to Cooper for a bone marrow transplant.   My poor brother and sister were looking up bone marrow transplants on you tube thinking that one of them were going to be my match and have to give me some bone marrow :/.

On Tuesday, June 5th, my fifths disease results were in, and as the infectious disease doctors at Cooper had suspected, I tested positive.  Apparently, because I am anemic, the parvovirus completely attacked my entire system, putting me into "critical condition".  They said the amount of the virus I had was very extreme.  As relieved as I was to hear that I DID have fifths disease (only because if not, then something else would have been seriously wrong), I panicked at the thought of knowing that the baby could now be at risk. I was told by the doctors on June 5th, that my body would start reproducing all of my bone marrow, red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets and that my hemoglobin should start getting better, but that it would take a while. I had to go to Mainland hospital every day to get follow up blood work done to see if things were improving.  I was also told that in order to make sure the baby was okay, I would have to get weekly ultrasounds for the rest of my pregnancy. At this time, I needed to stay on bed rest and could not return to work.


Over the next 2 weeks, I slowly started feeling a little bit better and a bit more energized but my blood work wasn't really showing much improvement. It was extremely discouraging.  I had another episode of crazy chills on June 10th and on June 18th, I winded up back at Mainland hospital for Braxton hicks contractions. My contractions were 3-4 minutes apart and pretty strong. Dr. Chang had told the nurses to give me the shot to stop the contractions, so they did.  They kept me over night and sent me for my scheduled ultrasound to check on the baby in the morning.  Matt had to leave for Penn State that morning for work and I was left alone to go get my ultrasound done.  I had my routine ultrasound and during my ultrasound, the high-risk doctors were concerned that the baby's abdomen was measuring too small. They hooked me up for another ultrasound and gave the baby a stress test. They told me the baby had to do 4 things in a matter of time. I was all by myself during this test and it felt like it was the longest test of my life. They said the baby did all but one thing. They were waiting for him to take a breath. They pounced on my belly, had me switch sides a couple of times and still weren't seeing anything. They tried to make me feel better by telling me that some times, fetus's only take breaths every 20 minutes or something crazy like that. Finally, Cruz took the smallest breath and they considered it to be passing the test.  Thank God. In the meantime, my mom had come up to the hospital with Chase to pick me up.

Four days later, I was given another ultrasound and blood work.  I finally had received some pretty good news. Cruz had grown 8 oz's since the past ultrasound AND my hemoglobin went from 5.8 to a 6.5. That is still a very low hemoglobin but in my mind, it was a great jump!

June 28th, the day before I got sent back up to Cooper. Chase, myself and my mom went on the pirate voyage in Ocean City :)

On June 29th, the day before I would be 30 weeks pregnant and one week after my good news ultrasound and blood work, I had gone in for another routine ultrasound.  This time, I had asked Matt to come with me since it was during his lunch break.  I hated going to the doctors without him because I felt as if I always received bad news while I was by myself.  We waited in the waiting room for a very long time.  While sitting there, I saw the high-risk doctor that told me I could die, Dr. Khandewal, walk by.  I suddenly got this horrible feeling in my stomach.  But knowing that the news she gave me and the way she presented it to me was devastating, I figured I just had a bad taste in my mouth and wasn't too fond of her.   A little while later, I was finally taken back for my ultrasound. At this time, Matt was already late for work. I had the same ultrasound tech that I had the past 2 visits, and let me tell you, I never had the feeling that she knew what she was doing.  She  somehow never remembered me nor did she know exactly why she was giving me an ultrasound. Frustrating to say the least.  Well, she did my ultrasound and when she was finished she said the same thing she said the 2 times before.  "Everything looks good, I just have to go input your numbers into the computer". It was then that I felt a sense of relief so I told Matt he could leave since he was already late for work.

Matt left and not even 2 minutes later, Dr. Khandelwal walks into my room and asks me to lay back down.  I then felt a sense of panic.  I had it in my head that this woman only comes around when there is bad news to be given! Sure enough, she started the ultrasound machine back up and she asked the ultrasound tech "did you check the blood flow through the umbilical cord" and the answer she was given was "NO". I'm sitting there thinking how could she not have checked that? That's what i'm supposed to be there for.  The high-risk doctor was sitting there quietly doing the ultrasound when I finally asked her "are you concerned". Her response was "YES, VERY".  I asked if I should have my husband come back and her exact words were "yes, he needs to come back, you are going back up to Cooper hospital to possibly deliver this baby".

My worse fears were confirmed.  The baby wasn't doing well. He wasn't getting enough blood flow through the umbilical cord. I was so scared, nervous and upset.  Instead of having an ambulance take me, they let Matt drive me to Cooper.  We drove home where my parents were with Chase, packed our bags, gave Chase a hug and a kiss and drove up to Cooper hospital.  As I mentioned before, when I arrived to Cooper, things were so much more calm. They put me in a room and set me up to a monitor. They then explained to me that they would just be monitoring the baby 2-3 times a day and that on Monday (this was a Friday), they would be giving me another ultrasound to check the blood flow again. This whole system didn't seem to sit well with me because the high-risk doctor at mainland just panicked again and made things seem very serious, so how could monitoring the baby only 2-3 times a day be ok?

Matt spent the night with me that night. That was the night that all of you here in south jersey got hit with the Derecho storm. I remember my mom texting me saying she was scared to death and that my house felt like it was going to blow over. My mom had spent the night at my house with Chase that night.  In the morning, Matt went home to spend the day with Chase.  Because of the derecho, we had all lost power at home, so Matt packed Chase up and got a hotel room up closer to the hospital.

my boys enjoying the fireworks in Camden while I was in the hospital!

I had gotten monitored on Friday and Saturday and the baby seemed to be doing okay. They gave me a steroid for Cruz's lungs just in case he would have to be delivered.  On Sunday, Matt had come up in the morning for a little and things were still okay.  Sunday afternoon, around 4 p.m. he brought Chase up again to see me before they headed home for the night.

Chase being silly while visiting me in the hospital with daddy.

While he was there, I had asked if the nurses could monitor me just in case anything happened.  They hooked me up to the monitor and sure enough, I was having Braxton hicks contractions and with each contraction, the baby's heart rate would drop.  They had taught me to read the monitoring paper and I could see what was going on.  After about an hour and a half of them monitoring me, the nurse came in and said Dr. Robinson would be in to talk to you soon.  Matt made a phone call to both my parents and his parents saying that things weren't going too good and that they needed to head up.

Dr. Robinson came into my room with Matt and Chase there and told us that he wanted to do an ultrasound to see how the baby was doing.  He brought the ultrasound machine into my room and hooked me up.  As he was doing the ultrasound, Cruz was very still with his fists clinched tightly.  All we can remember of Dr. Robinson was that he kept brushing his hair behind his ear. This was a sign to us that something probably wasn't right. When Matt asked him if he was concerned, he answered with yes, we will need to deliver you tonight.  Right then and there my heart sunk.  Seeing Cruz on the ultrasound machine, not moving in the slightest bit made Matt and I extremely nervous.  We didn't know what to expect of the baby when he was born. Would he be alive? Would he be breathing? Would he be ok?

The time was now very close to 7 p.m. which is when Dr. Robinson's shift would end.  Being in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar doctors is a very uneasy feeling and to me there was nothing more uneasy about having an unfamiliar doctor cut me open and deliver my unborn baby.  I had asked Dr. Robinson, who I had gotten to know over the 2 weekends that I spent in Cooper hospital, if he could stay and deliver Cruz. He said that they don't really allow them to stay over their shift to deliver but that I would be in good hands.  During this time, my dad had called Matt and told him that the traffic was bumper to bumper on the expressway due to Sunday night traffic going back to the Philly area.  My parents weren't sure if they would be able to make it to the hospital in time.  Matt's parents were also on their way to the hospital and I had called my cousin Kelly who was up in the Philly area to have her head over our way as well.  The last thing that I wanted was to go into this c-section all by myself. We needed someone to get there as soon as possible to watch Chase for us.

A few minutes later, Dr. Robinson came back into my room and told me the wonderful news that they were allowing him to stay late and that he would be doing my c-section. Part of me was so relieved. I had some comfort in knowing that he was going to deliver me instead of a random doctor.  As they were getting ready to wheel me back for my delivery, my parents walked into my room. I'm not sure how they got there as fast as they did but part of me thinks my dad must have driven the shoulder the entire way up the expressway :)

After what seemed like an extremely long prep and c-section, Cruz Alexander Willson was born on July 1, 2012 at 9:06 p.m. weighing in at 2lb 12oz and breathing on his own! Hearing him scream as they took him out was probably the best sound we could have ever heard.

first born...crying his little lungs out...best sound ever

seeing my sweet boy for the first time...love at first sight

One thing I learned after this whole experience that the high-risk doctor who I always felt gave me bad news, actually saved Cruz's life. I am so happy that she was working the day that they realized Cruz wasn't getting the blood flow through the umbilical cord. If they would have sent me home that day, I could have lost Cruz in utero. Thank you Dr. Khandelwal. We are forever grateful for you :)


I will write Cruz's story very soon.....