That Time I Got Robbed While 7 Months Pregnant

I thought I'd share a story about the time I was hospitalized after my house was broken into and robbed while I was home and pregnant....

I was reading an article recently talking about how people who have had their homes broken into often suffer from PTSD. Since last August I can definitely agree with this because that is when my house was broken into. Since then I have been afraid to be home by myself and am paranoid that every little sound is someone breaking into my home again.

I guess I should start at the beginning. My husband and I moved to a new home in the Appalachian Mountains close to a year ago. We felt safe because we were on top of a mountain and isolated from the rest of the world. Our neighbors aren't close, but at the same time not too far....just the perfect distance for a bit of privacy. We loved our new home. Before we lived in a big city where businesses had bars on their windows and I didn't feel safe going places by myself at times.

(Picture of our house before we renovated the living room. This was the room the thief robbed).

For months we enjoyed our "safe" little home on our mountain. I was pregnant and ended up having a very painful pregnancy. I suffered from kidney problems the entire time and by 7 months in I could barely walk. The worst day of my life happened last August. I was 7 months pregnant and felt horrible. I had gone to the Dr a few days earlier to do a gestational diabetes test. That afternoon, I decided to go for a swim to take some of the pregnancy weight off my back and to help my swelling feet. While I was swimming I got a phone call from my Dr saying that I had gestational diabetes. This crushed me because I'd already had a painful pregnancy because of my kidney problems. I gained 50 pounds (30 of water weight) because of my kidney issues. Gestational diabetes meant I couldn't have that beautiful piece of chocolate cake I craved until after the baby was born.

I was really stressed out and couldn't calm my mind so I went in the house and decided to take a nap. We had a sliding glass door at the time with a broken lock. We used a piece of wood pushed into the track to lock the door. I guess that day I didn't put the wood into place very well. My husband was asleep in our bedroom and snoring so I decided to lay down in our other bedroom. At one point during my nap I heard some bangs in the kitchen and assumed it was my husband banging around. It wasn't. It was a stranger forcing the wood out of place and breaking in through the sliding glass door.

I woke up a few hours later and found the sliding glass door wide open and my husband no where in sight. I walked into the living room and saw our 50 inch TV ,that I had left on earlier, was no longer there. Then I saw that my laptop, which I leave on the couch, was also gone. The realization that we'd been robbed hit me and I ran to the bedroom to find my sleeping husband snoring. I was afraid he might have been hurt because he was sleeping next to the living room. He was in a deep sleep and never heard a thing. I woke him up and we called the cops. They never found the person or our stuff.

Later that night I was full of anxiety and couldn't relax. My heart was beating fast and I got really sick. I starting throwing up and got a fever. I could barely stand up. I think the shock of realizing someone was in my house while I was asleep was too much for my pregnant, sick body. My husband drove me to the emergency room where they said I might need to be induced because they baby's heartbeat dropped. I was in the hospital 4 days and the baby's heartbeat normalized. My blood pressure was through the roof and they monitored me and treated my kidney infection with antibiotics. A month later I'd be forced to have a c-section 6 weeks early due to high blood pressure. After we got robbed I couldn't relax in my own home. I was terrified to be alone. I was terrified to bring a baby there.

We found out a few days later that our house had been broken into a few weeks earlier because a fisherman had turned in my lock box to the police. He had found it in the river near our house when he was fishing and my name and phone number were in it. We found out from detectives that 7 houses in our neighborhood had been broken into around that time. Our closest neighbor was hit twice like us. It's been a while since the break in but I still jump up at the slightest noise when I'm in bed at night. We put extra locks on our doors and I blocked off the sliding glass doors so they can't be used. I bought security cameras recently to give me peace of mind but that fear still lingers. I hate the person who broke in for taking that feeling of safety from me.