Silly Uterus

November 9th we welcomed Miss Amelia into the world. I had a c-section and I was surprised the recovery wasn’t as painful as I remembered it being after I had Penelope – but I was not about to complain! I did notice however that I was hardly bleeding and I felt bloated too often. The entire first week at home I would become extremely hot and sweaty only to become freezing cold 30 minutes later. I assumed it was because my milk was making a certain part of my body 102^o while the rest of me was 97^o.
Well, last Friday the morning of Amelia’s one week check up - - let me back up a bit. The night before no one in the house slept. Penelope had nightmares, Amelia just wanted to eat, I was in pain and had to keep getting up to go to the bathroom, Zack and my mom continually had to check on the girls. It was a mess. I also noticed that I had been bleeding all night, but didn’t want to alarm Zack, so I just ignored it.
The next morning I was drained. I could not stop bleeding. When I stood up, sat down, stood still. I had no energy and considered just letting my mom take Amelia to her appointment while I stayed with Penelope at the house. For some reason I decided to go. If my mom had not been there I would’ve cancelled the appointment all together, and then who knows where I would’ve been today.
The previous Monday Amelia had an appointment and her doctor knew about my severe anemia and even wrote down my iron levels so she could keep an eye on me as well. So, when we arrived Friday she knew something wasn’t right, as did the nurse. The nurse called my doctor to see what steps we should take. At this point I’m pretty sure I was beyond white, basically clear. I had officially been bleeding non-stop for 12 hours. I felt like I had no blood left in me. My doctor gave a quick order to send my to the ER, so the nurse pushed me there in a wheelchair. Penelope loved the ride :)
Once there, they could not find a single vain to put in an IV. They tried both arms, but it seemed I really did have hardly any blood left. I ended up getting one of those lovely large IVs in my neck. The first step they were going to try (all of the options were surgery – yay.) was a DNC, assuming I had blood and possible placenta left in me. Also,  just by feeling my belly the doctor could tell my uterus was still up high, [It was above my belly button instead of far below it.] so they were also going to put in a “balloon” to put pressure on the walls of my uterus to help control the bleeding, and it would help gradually shrink my uterus (tired of that word yet?).
Thankfully I was knocked out for the whole thing – oh, except the massive IV in my neck, I had the pleasure of feeling that whole magical process. When I woke up I had another IV by my wrist but I felt fine and Zack had just arrived in the waiting room. He walked with us up to my room in PEDs – because what’s better for a new mother than hearing children cry in pain and fear while away from her own kids? Although I did have the best nurses and care the entire time and no child had to stay long.
From there they just had to watch my bleeding and I had a couple of fevers, so they also had to watch for infections. I had bad chest pains and it was getting harder to take breaths. So…I had to have a CT Scan to check for a clot in my lungs, but none of the IVs I had were pressurized, which was required for the process. Guess what – I needed another IV. It took 12 – TWELVE!! – tries by 5 of the best nurses for placing IVs  from all areas of the hospital. One wasn’t even on duty, but she was the one that ended up getting it after her 3rd try. If that last one had not worked I was going to refuse the CT Scan. I was exhausted. I had no tears or blood left.
The scan was clean – which meant I could get the balloon out and if I wasn’t bleeding out of control I could get the IV out of my neck, but I still had a couple of hours left to wait. All went well. I had a total of 4 pints of blood before I went home as well.
My last night at the hospital I was completely unhooked aside from one IV. The nurses printed out another bracelet to scan and put it on the IV stand, so the didn’t have to wake me up. Such nice nurses! I was able to sleep all night, only waking up twice to go to the bathroom. I felt a thousand times better when I woke up in the morning. Saturday (the day before I had been up from 3am until 11pm – I needed that sleep!). I was able to go home as soon as I pleased, We were out of there at 11am Sunday morning.
I came home and took a much needed shower and a really good nap! Then I rocked my baby girl as I fed her. I missed my girls so much!
Some photos of our night back together: : :


Hopefully now I can get back to blogging and documenting fun things in our life!
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