A uterine hemorrhage
was not even on my radar. Especially eight
days postpartum. My pregnancy was horrible for me. I was a hormonal,
depressed, hurting mess of a person. My poor husband, son, and family….it was
rough. I finally had my babies, a wonderful
hospital experience and immediate
relief from everything I’d been going through. I was in a love bubble and my
body was recovering so well. My tummy was shrinking so fast and my bleeding was
already light after only a week.
The entire twin pregnancy I’d said probably everyday, “This
pregnancy is going to kill me.” Then
eight days postpartum it came very close to doing exactly that.
My mother-in-law had planned to stay with us the first two
weeks of the twin’s life, which we were very grateful to have. So on a Thursday
morning, with eight-day-old twins, we left with just our oldest for a quick
Costco run and some one-on-one with him. The babies were fed, asleep, and with
their grandma. I felt exhausted when
we were leaving Costco, and I’d honestly done more than what that errand had
entailed already.
I turned to my husband as we were leaving and told him, “I
think my bleedings picked up a little, I just feel weak.” When we got back the babies
were still asleep, (I’m telling you this was a quick run to the store!), so I
laid down. My bleeding was heavier, but not concerning at the time. I couldn’t
have been asleep for more than a half hour when a rushing feeling in my abdomen
woke me.
Something was about to fall out of me. I didn’t know what
was happening, but I did know immediately that something was very wrong. It honestly felt like my whole uterus was
going to fall out. I jumped out of bed and ran full speed to the bathroom just
barely making it to our tile floor when I was standing in huge pool of my own
blood. It had all fallen out of me at once. I mean my clothes were completed
saturated and it was all over the floor.
I yelled for my husband who was washing dishes and didn’t
hear me, but my mother-in-law told him to come up. She could hear the urgency
in my voice. He came running into the room and I just told him crying in fear,
“I’m bleeding, it’s a lot of blood.”
My husband is a Paramedic,
and my paramedic husband looked freaked out. He is trained to estimate blood
loss and put the amount I was standing in to be around 300-500ml. I remember
looking at a measuring cup later that week and thinking right around 400ml if
it were to spill on the floor looked like what I remembered.
I was standing there pulling my clothes off and turning the
shower on. My husband, looking shocked and scared came over to help me out of
my clothes but told me, “No, turn that off, there’s no time for that, we have
to get you to the hospital. I’ll help you clean up, but we have to go right now.”
Scared and shaking I changed my clothes with his help,
wiping blood off my legs. He yelled down to his mom that we had to go to the
hospital. He slowly walked me downstairs, grabbed a towel on our way for the
car, and I kissed my babies. My older son was asleep in his room. I cried and
hugged my MIL, who looked me dead in the eye and reassured me, “I got this, I
love you” and I slowly got in the car.
My husband drove me to the hospital I’d delivered at, since
it had a trauma center. The parking lot of the hospital was full and my husband
attempted driving around to find a spot close to the ER door because I told him
I didn’t think I could stand up again with out loosing a ton of blood again.
With no luck he parked, after I tried to stand up I felt blood rushing again
and told him I knew I couldn’t get up without loosing a lot of blood. He ran
for a wheel chair and helped me and my towel move onto it. Sure enough more
blood was coming. The ER room was so busy and we waited what felt like forever
even though they’d triaged me.
Finally they found me a room and ordered an ultrasound. My
husband was frustrated from the start that no one seemed to be listening to him
about the amount of blood I’d lost at home and I was frustrated that they kept
asking me “How many pads did you go through?” To which I responded, “I don’t
know it wasn’t pads, it was a large puddle of blood on the floor all at once.”
The ER doctor ordered me an ultrasound and the tech told me
she couldn’t tell me the results, but they’d have the OBGYN look it over.
After begging my ER nurse to change my sheets, she finally
took me seriously that I had indeed bleed through everything. The sheets, chuck pads, everything. It was becoming
scarier.
About 45 minutes after the ER waiting room and another 45 in
the ER, my OBGYN came down to look at me. Dr.
Z. She had been my favorite of my many OBGYNs during pregnancy, I had
wanted her to deliver the twins because I felt close to her, but they’d
recommended the doctor with more twin delivery experience.
Everything changed when she got there. She seemed upset they
hadn’t called her sooner and was trying to measure the blood loss, something my
nurse hadn’t been doing. She told me she was going to try to stop the bleeding
there if she could but if it was too much we’d move to surgery. It didn’t take
but one quick look at me and the amount of blood and she just kept saying,
“It’s a lot of blood. It’s just a lot of blood” over and over again. So we were
going to surgery. Not minutes after she’d arrived in my room there was a flurry
of ER and OR nurses putting in new IV lines. I remember my husband catching
that my Pitocin bag was leaking and everyone rushing around trying to get
everything done quickly. That was the moment I noticed my husband looking more
worried and pale than I’d ever seen him.
Dr. Z explained the surgery risks including a possible tear
of the uterus resulting in a hysterectomy and paused to say that other things
could go wrong as well, that I would be put fully under and intubated. That’s
where I lost it. I had been strong and I started bawling my eyes out, she
grabbed my hand and my husband grabbed the other. With total fear I asked when
I would get to go home to my babies, that I needed to breastfeed them, and
asked if I was going to wake up in ICU.
I clearly didn’t understand the type of surgery, a dilation
and curettage (D&C), it wasn’t going to be that type of recovery she
assured me. “Hopefully you can go home tonight.” She told me.
The anesthesiologist came in let me know he was going to
start a blood transfusion. The moment he left the room I could hear Dr. Z
having the ER and OR teams meet quickly to discuss the plan. The
anesthesiologist let her know he was going to start a blood transfusion. She
wanted them to get me to OR first. I heard her tell him to go ahead but quickly
because, “We just need to go and we need
to go NOW.”
The OR team came in the room and the anesthesiologist did in
fact start that transfusion right away, the second it was started they were
moving me. My doctor squeezed my hand the whole way to OR and a beautiful OR
nurse with bright pink lipstick named, R, held my other hand. Dr. Z only let go
briefly outside the OR room to talk to my husband who was asking how they were
going to monitor my blood sugars and trying to hand them my Dexcom and my cell
phone so they could have the real time graph we use. It was too confusing and I
told him not to worry, to let them just do the blood sugar checks.
He thanked Dr. Z, told me how much he loved me, took the
pager they gave him, and they wheeled me into OR with Dr. Z squeezing my hand
again. She didn’t let go until I was under. Nurse R was squeezing my other hand
and whispering “spicy” to me as they put the medicine into my IV to knock me
out, it did indeed sting and I appreciate R’s “spicy” commentary to help. I
breathed deeply into the mask they put on me and repeated my husband and kids
names back to myself over and over again.
I woke up in recovery, with the recovery room nurses
monitoring me and my husband by my side. I could hear him saying bye to one of
the OR nurses and thanking him. I could hear him and Dr. Z talking before I was
fully awake. She came back in later. Told me how well I was doing and how much
more blood I’d lost in surgery.
At some point while they were removing lines or when I’d
been transfer, my Dexcom transmitter that monitors my blood sugars had been
accidently pulled from my arm. I didn’t notice until I was back up on mother-baby
and wondering why Dexcom wasn’t getting any readings. It was a small loss in
the big picture and thankfully I had a spare waiting at home.
They moved me back up to mother-baby around 11pm so I could
pump milk and because that was the floor for my OBGYN. My blood count was not
up yet and they needed to give me more blood and plasma before I could go home.
My doctor was hopeful by morning my lab work would show that it was safe to
discharge me. She reiterated that I’d lost A LOT of blood.
The nurse who had me on mother-baby when the twins were born
saw my husband and doctor in the hallway; she was just coming on shift and
immediately requested to take me as her patient. She’d been so wonderful with
the twins and us, it was such a comforting feeling to see her again. My husband
saw her crying and she later reported to me that Dr. Z had to walk away from
her mid-sentence, crying.
I had lost 700ml in surgery, in addition to the estimated
300-500 at home, and my husband and I suspect another 300-500 between home and
the surgery. Anywhere between 1300-1700ml of blood!
My husband went home to help relieve his mother, who was our
saving grace that day, and came back in the morning as soon as my blood counts
were up and I could go home.
I was a mess the 10 days between the hemorrhage and my
post-op appointment. My husband would find me bawling and clinging to our
babies and older son, terrified it could happen again, traumatized from having
had to leave them. “I just can’t go back, I can’t be away from them again.”
At my post-op, Dr. Z was incredible, asking me how I was
doing and making sure to ask, “How’s your husband? He was traumatized too.” I’m
so grateful for her, for saving my life, and for carrying me emotionally out of
it. For hardly letting go of my hand the entire time. She did a thorough exam
at that appointment so I would feel better, and verified my uterus was back to its
normal size and I stopped fearing it would happen again. I still had a hard
time because I spent months reliving the event.
My mother-baby nurse said something I needed to hear, “I
don’t know why these things happen, I’m so sorry. Sometimes it makes sense
later and sometimes it doesn’t.” She was right. Sometimes we don’t get to know
why bad or hard things happen. However, I have found many reasons and drive
behind the experience. I savored 3am feeding more often that not, I sat longer
for cuddles, I didn’t mom-guilt myself as much, and on bad days I try to remind
myself, “Not bleeding to death in the hospital, I’m going to get through this.”
It hasn’t made me perfect, this year has still been hard, I still have my
bitter and bad days, but it’s greatly extended the power of my love, my strength,
and my gratitude for life.
Be still, my full and grateful heart.
Comments
Post a Comment