I have a lead in to it. As you know about 2 weeks ago I had some spotting. Baby was fine. No worries. We heard the heartbeat and it was fine. I asked the doctor. What do I do if the bleeding gets worse. He said that if something bad is going to happen that it is going to happen really quick. And we will know it.
I had my 13 weeks ultrasound NT scan to check for chromosomal deficiencies on Friday afternoon. SHE was just fine. That is right, the doc gave us an 80% chance that it was our little girl. We never saw anything out of the ordinary. I even asked him to look for why I was spotting the other week. Nothing. So I was clear to do a little exercise, or walking again.
Saturday, I volunteered at the Charlottesville 10 miler. If you can't join them, cheer them on! And then came home, rested and then started making a nice dinner for some friends who were coming over for dinner. Matt and I put the kids down for bed, they seemed extra tired a little earlier than normal, a blessing in disguise. And Matt and I went back downstairs to start cleaning up the mess from dinner.
That is when I felt it. Too much stuff down there. I ran to the bathroom and the bleeding wouldn't stop. I called a church friend and neighbor and before I finished saying, "C I need you to come over and help." She was already running out of her house to come over. She stayed the whole night with 2 kids who knew that something wasn't right.
Matt sped to the ER close to our home and we were admitted. The bleeding stopped for a little while. We waited for the nurse to come in a take my vitals and they tried to listen to the heartbeat and they couldn't find it, but I was feeling her kicking at me. So I knew she was ok. I got an ultrasound and the tech showed me right away her heartbeat and bouncing up and down. She was ok. Just fine. Then the tech did her job trying to find out what was going on. She kept commenting on how active the baby was.
We got sent back to our room and waited and waited. About 30 min later. I felt this POP! in my lower abdomen and I just started gushing liquid. I cried out because I couldn't control it and it frankly it scared the crap out of me! The entire ER staff came rushing in. The doc said that in the ultrasound they saw that the amniotic sac was already protruding down through the cervix and a miscarriage was imminent. And was starting. I started crying. FREAKING OUT is more like it. I continued to have these surges of gushes over the next few hours.
Before some of the gushes I would get a severe cramp and my ears would clog up. I started to feel dizzy and became delirious. My blood pressure dropped significantly and the docs started to pump me full of fluids to get my BP up and stabilized. I was begging for some drugs and they wouldn't give me any. I also was begging for water. I was so thirsty and I was refused that too. They said that they didn't want me to get sick.
I had 4 rounds of my BP dropping quite a bit and lots of blood. At some point I passed the baby, but they never told me when. But I was still bleeding quite a bit even after the baby. By the 4th BP drop they were getting concerned. They took my blood levels again to compare my beginning levels. I had lost 3 units of blood. That is a lot in their speak. They called my OB who they had been talking to and told him my blood levels. He requested that I be transferred to the main hospital to be examined by him, and possible surgery. Things were getting serious at this point. They did another blood pull before I left. Just as I was strapped up in the gurney for the ambulance.
I rode with lights and sirens to the hospital about 2o min away, it is faster when all the lights are green for you! Got to the ER at the hospital and was told I was scheduled for surgery for a D&E. Where they go in and scrape out anything that won't come out on their own. I got admitted by the OR people and went back. Got oxygen and don't even remember falling asleep. Next thing I knew I was in recovery. They told me that the surgery lasted 30 min, 15 min longer than I was originally told. And that I did very well.
My doc came in and said that I had a placenta abruption and that it is a very serious thing. Basically the placenta detached from the uterus. That is the cause of the gushing of blood. But not all of the placenta had detached. and that was very serious. When that happens, the uterus can not clamp down all the way and a large gaping hole is exposed and pumping blood out and won't close like it is supposed to. My doc said that by the time I got to surgery I had lost over 4 units of blood. (I later learned that is equal to 1/4 of all my blood in my body and is quite a bit!) And had I not had the surgery when I did, I might not have made it. He saved my life.
Fast forward to after. I was admitted as a patient to the hospital. When my doc came in the next morning. I had been having more dizzy spells every time I went to the bathroom and just felt weak and just out of it. I signed blood transfusion paperwork just in case I would need it. Never did. My blood work came back as severely anemic but not as bad as I was just a few hours prior. My body was building it back up on it's own. All day Sunday I was still dizzy if I sat up too long, or got up to go to the bathroom. I had a lovely extended stay at the hospital for another night for monitoring and getting released this morning to go home.
It was a very traumatic experience to go through. I left out some details about the miscarriage on purpose. If you are ever curious about that let me know and we can talk but it was so hard to go through that.
How am I doing? I am an emotional wreck. I actually found a way to cope with my emotions by avoiding one topic about the miscarriage of how I am feeling and basically flipped my emotion switch to off until I am ready to deal with what happened emotionally. I need to let my body heal. It is kind of a weird feeling being emotionally separated. Not to say I am not sad but I have had some pretty awful feelings that I just can't handle right now.
I have been grieving in my own way. My family has been grieving. My boys have been with church family all day Sunday and Sunday night. They will go with another family Monday as well. my church is really taking care of me. My sis in law arrives tomorrow morning after a red eye train ride. She will leave on Wednesday evening and that is when my mother arrives to help out for the next week. Including the church I am feeling very blessed and loved with all of the support we have received in this very difficult time in our lives.
I will miss being pregnant. I already feel hollow and empty. I had been feeling her kick for the last 2.5 weeks and now nothing. Just a flabby tummy where my belly had already started to expand. I will miss not having my little girl join our family in September as I was so excited for her to do. But someday we will have another child and hopefully it will be our little girl. Please forgive my lack of posts lately as I am deal with this. I thank you for sticking around and for your support. You love is felt 10 fold and it gives me strength that I didn't know I had. Thank you my friends.
**Update: We have received some new information on how this miscarriage might actually have been a blessing in disguise. Read about it out here.
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