For the past week, things have been going very well here at the house. Tam had been feeding well and we had fallen into a 3 hour routine for most of the day. We were slowly getting the hang of cloth diapers and poopy messes. Tam had his first doctor visit and is looking great! I was doing pretty well, but my blood pressure was still high for me and I was still retaining lots of fluid in my ankles. I had also had some chill/shaking episodes earlier in the week. Because of this, I ran in for a quick doctor visit for reassurance. I didn't get to see my ob, but one of the partners. He was a little worried about my blood pressure, but it was still going back down when I was resting. Because I was breastfeeding, he didn't want to give me any drugs yet. So, home I went feeling better that everything was still healing well in me. For Thanksgiving this year, my mom, Dale, and Shelly all came out to celebrate the holiday and good food. They all arrived Wednesday night and delighted in playing with little Tam for most of the evening. However, this didn't mean that he would sleep through the night yet and give his parents needed rest :-)
Thursday morning, I awoke to hearing Tam fidgeting for his 8am feeding. Brian was already downstairs with the folks and preparing breakfast. We have Tam in the family bassinet in the bedroom so he's close for night feedings. I was able to get him, feed him, and put him back in the crib easily...but I had started to feel "leaky." As I set him back down, I heard "splat" & "splotch". I immediately lost two lemon-size blood clots onto the floor. I called for Brian and lost another blood clot on the way to the bathroom. Thankfully, Brian saw my bloody mess and called 911 without batting an eye. I am so glad he doesn't lose his mind in emergencies. I was not in pain and was still coherent but really wondering what was going on with my body. The first response guys are from the local fire department; they were two big burly older gentlemen who came upstairs into the bathroom to check on me. I know they felt a bit uncomfortable to see me in my p.j.s bleeding from my uterus. They are mostly there first to make sure I wasn't rapidly dying (I wasn't). I laughed with them a little bit about it. Luckily, the EMTs arrived minutes later and had more of a clue what to do. They quickly got me out of the house, onto a stretcher, and into the ambulance. At this point, I was still mostly coherent, not in any pain, but bleeding quite steadily. It was a great disgusting leaking feeling. Brian followed the ambulance to the hospital and my parents stayed at home with little Tamlin.
We arrived at the hospital fairly quickly, even though the ambulance driver didn't take the most direct route there. I remember talking to the guy in the ambulance quite a bit. Mostly I was rambling about anything that flitted across my mind because I didn't want to think about how scared I was. I even remember commenting on the ambulance equipment being Dell and not Apple (lol). Once at the hospital, I remember hoping that Brian knew where to park near the emergency entrance. All this happened fairly quickly and it was still early in the morning so the hospital itself was quiet.
I hadn't been in an emergency room since I was a little kid, but I did remember that everything took forever to happen and that there was often a ton of waiting to find out what was wrong. At first, this situation was no different. They got me linked into monitors for vital checks and had an IV started and padded me for the bleeding. Brian and I kind of hung out being worried together. I remember gazing at his face and his look was so worrisome; I felt so bad for being the cause of putting it there. I was holding steady and our room was fairly quiet. I even joked with our nurse that things couldn't be too bad, or else there would be a ton more people in my room working frantically on me. After what seemed to be an hour (my sense of time was warped), they wheeled me out to do an ultrasound. The ultrasound tech was pretty closed lipped and wouldn't say much about what she was looking at. Looking back, that should have been a clue that things weren't going well. While at the ultrasound, Brian and I joked that we at least knew there wasn't a baby in there anymore. As the ultrasound progressed, I started to get more quiet and my thighs began shaking uncontrollably. Then I started to feel some mild cramping. I know I wasn't doing well because I stopped talking as much and turned my thoughts inward to what was happening inside my body.
Even after they brought me back to the emergency room from the ultrasound room, my shaking continued. Quickly it progressed to the point that my legs and my teeth were shaking and I was getting really cold. I remember thinking "why can't I stop my teeth from chattering"? Apparently, I looked horrific and deathly pale, because the nurse and doctors seemed to spring into action with warm blankets. I have to admit that I wasn't too coherent at this point, but didn't pass out. Brian said later that I actually "crashed" twice while in the emergency room. Not to the point that my heart stopped or near death, but definitely on the brink of shock. The immediate response from this was to give me a blood transfusion. Because of how rapidly I was losing blood, they actually gave me two liters simultaneously. One of the hardest things to do at this time was to focus on the doctor or nurses when they asked me questions or were telling me what they were doing. I do remember trying desperately hard to focus in on the nurse explaining the risks of a blood transfusion and then I had to try to sign the form. Because I was still conscience, I had to sign it and Brian couldn't sign for me. I know that signature looked mostly like a squiggly line!
At this point, I did stop shaking. Warm blankets are wonderful things. However, the cramping was getting worse in pain. It was nearly as bad as the contractions I felt during birth, but they were hurting dreadfully and there wasn't much space between them were there was a pause in the pain. It was like someone squeezing your insides with spikey gloves = not fun. Again, after what was another hour or so, (we did get to watch part of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade), the doctor and another ob from the practice I go to came to tell me that they were going to take me into surgery for a D & C, or dilation and curettage . This was because I still had many large blood clots in my uterus and they were going to physically clean them out all at once and then (hopefully) stop the bleeding. From the emergency room, we went to the surgery prep area. Quite thankfully, Brian could still be with me right up to the moment of the surgery.
We waited, again, what was forever, before the surgery. The pain was getting worse and I remember just holding Brian hands and having tears running down my face. Brian looked so worried and so afraid for me and all I could do was squeeze his hand. I know I was still bleeding and in pain and just really hopeful that the surgery would make everything better. Eventually, the anesthesiologist arrived and was ready to take me away. I knew it would be ok and I totally trusted my doctor to do well so that I could see Brian again shortly. I remember the last joke I made with the doctor was that I hoped he wasn't like House on TV. One of the nurses answered that he was much nicer but they still had a few McDreamies running around the hospital. I don't remember counting or anything...just nothing.
Afterwards, I was in the post-surgery area and Brian couldn't come and see me quite yet. My assigned nurse was really nice and quickly told me that the surgery went well and that she had informed Brian of that too (so he wouldn't worry). I felt no pain, but they did say that they gave me some morphine anyways. Again, I remember rambling at the nurse, and telling her that she needn't listen to me too much, just make the appropriate "listening" sounds. I remember commenting on the bed curtains, on my working on plants that don't bleed, and on how I was trying to visit all the various floors in the hospital. I was waiting on another blood draw and results of the hemoglobin count before they would take me away to my room. When Brian was finally allowed back to see me, I almost cried again from relief. I was so glad everything went well...I know he was thankful too that there were no further complications.
We had hoped that I would be able to leave that night, but it looked like no Thanksgiving dinner for me and Brian. The worse at this time was not the pain anymore, or the not knowing what's wrong, but I was deathly thirsty and had dry-mouth something horrific. They wouldn't let me have anything yet, just in case I had to be sent back to surgery quickly. It was well into the afternoon by the time we were done downstairs and Brian and I were ensconce in my hospital room for the night. While in the room, all of the days emotions finally hit me all at once. It had been a scary, worrisome, painful, frightening day, and I missed our little Tam so much; I was so glad to just get a safe hug from Brian while I let the tears flow for a bit. After calming ourselves down, we killed the time until my next blood draw (was this number 4 or 5?) by watching "dirty jobs" on television. The tv show definitely makes my teaching job appear pretty mundane. I also still had to wait to eat or drink until about 7pm that night...and by that time the cafeteria had closed! The nurse however, heard our plea, and brought Brian and I a bit of their pot-luck dinner. So we did get to have some turkey and stuffing after the entire ordeal. I did have Brian go home afterwards to be with our little one and get some much needed rest.
The rest of my night wasn't too peaceful, but was uneventful. I was allowed to take a hot shower and finally feel really clean. Apparently I was admitted to the "women's floor", which meant that I got really nice shampoo and lotion for my hot shower :-) However, unfortunately, I also got another liter of blood around 10pm (that makes 3) which meant my vitals were checked every 30 minutes until abut 1am (besides, yet another blood draw for another hemoglobin count). About 2am I was finally allowed to sleep uninterrupted until 6am for a final blood draw. If the 6am hemoglobin count was up, they would let me go home...and luckily it was. The doctor came in and talked to me around 8am and told me that I had lost nearly 2/3 of my total blood between before surgery and during. He also reassured me that having blood clots this late after birth was not uncommon, but not common by far and that it was not predictable or preventable. It does mean that if I am pregnant again, I will have to be watched more closely for a re-occurrence. I called Brian quickly, and left by around 10am with a prescription to contract my uterus and for iron pills since I would probably be anemic for a good couple of months. I was wicked glad to see Brian in the morning and even more happy to go home to hold my baby again.
In the end, it was a pretty horrible Thanksgiving, and one I'm sure the family will remember for quite a while. Tamlin did fine with the grandparents for the night and had no problems going from breast to formula bottle and back to breast again. I'm doing really well with no pain and barely any bleeding...I'm just a little tired. To all my friends who are reading this and now scared to death of pregnancy...this was not common and it shouldn't stop you from bringing a little guy into our world to love :-) Next time I blog, I promise to post more good news...like how the family saved all of the Thanksgiving dinner until I got home and we feasted Friday night :-)
