how it all happened :: lucy’s birth story [part 1]

I had been on bedrest for a week, and I hated it. I was nesting like crazy, and all I wanted to do was clean and organize and hang curtains in Lucy’s nursery and finish the binding on her quilt and scrub every baseboard in our house with a q-tip.

But I couldn’t. I was stuck sitting on the couch while watching the dog hair pile up in the corners.

It was Wednesday, August 25, and Emma was getting bored from sitting inside 24/7. I bought some fun play-dough and molds so we could have something to do that we both enjoyed. And we made brownie bites and downloaded some new games for the iPod.

So it started out as a normal day.

Around 5:30pm, Emma was throwing herself onto my yoga/birthing ball and flipped off and hit the entertainment center with the back of her head. Tears ensued, she jumped into my lap, and I consoled her as I do very often (after all, she’s a very active 3-year old and hurts herself approximately 892 times a day).

And then I said something to make her laugh while she still had tears in her eyes.

[And that was the last picture I took before our lives changed]

Ken was teaching that night, so I put some frozen french bread pizzas in the oven, and we each had a slice with some applesauce. I always eat applesauce with frozen pizza – it’s something I did as a little girl and something I guess I’ll always do.

Now here’s where I tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It’s not pretty, so proceed at your own risk.

I was sitting on the couch around 6:30 [around the same time Becky left this comment on my blog] when I felt a pop and a gush – it was very similar to the pop I felt when my water broke with Emma. My first thought was, “Oh crap, my water just broke,” and I instantly thought of the little section in my 35-week pregnancy email that I had gotten the day before …

If you’ve been nervous about preterm labor, you’ll be happy to know that babies born between 34 and 37 weeks who have no other health problems generally do fine.

I took a deep breath and stood up to go get my phone to call my midwife, and that’s when I noticed it wasn’t clear amniotic fluid. It was blood.

And it wasn’t a trickle or spotting or anything like that.

It was like someone had turned on a faucet.

Let me just say thank goodness for hardwood floors (and for mother-in-laws who can miraculously get blood out of microsuede sofas).

I went straight to the bathroom and sat on the toilet before I realized I didn’t have my phone with me. As I watched the blood pouring into the toilet, I started realizing this wasn’t going away, so I started getting a little panicky. But I wanted to keep Emma from freaking out – she was saying, “Why are you bleeding? Where is this blood coming from?” – so I sent her to look for my phone.

She brought it to me, and I promptly started trying to get in touch with Ken and my midwife … NO ONE was answering their phones. Ken was administering an exam, so he had turned his phone off. My midwife and I had never discussed the protocol for what was going on, so I didn’t know to leave her a message on her cell phone.

I emailed Ken at 6:46pm …

subject: 911 – call me immediately!

I finally got through to my mom … and promptly forgot about not freaking out. I completely freaked out. Luckily, Emma had gone to her playroom and wasn’t there with me. Mom told me to call 9-1-1 and that she was on her way (she lives an hour and a half away in Georgia).

I stood up to see if I could grab a towel, and that’s when I lost a very large blood clot.

About 10” long, 3” thick.

I called 9-1-1 and gave them all of my info … about 3 minutes later, the first responders fire department volunteers got here. Four burly guys. One of them went straight to Emma and started talking to her.

Now, under normal circumstances, she would be completely freaked out by men, but God must have had a hand on the situation, because she was chatting it up with him in no time. I found out later that he gave her two little beanie baby stuffed animals, but I don’t remember that.

One guy grabbed the mop out of my cleaning closet and started mopping up the blood.

The other two guys started taking my vitals and asking me questions.

By this point, the contractions had started. I timed the first at around 10 minutes. In just a matter of a few contractions, they were down to every 2-3 minutes apart.

And then the EMT’s arrived.

They took over for the first responders to get more detailed information.

A local friend called me (my mom had called her mom) to see if I needed help, but then my sister-in-law walked in to take care of Emma. I guess my mom got through to Ken and then he called my sister-in-law, who lives right down the road? I’m still not sure what all happened there.

At this point, the EMT’s told me that they would take me to the hospital via ambulance, and I just kept saying, “But you have to wait for my husband – he’s on his way home.”

He walked in as they were getting me up to walk me out to the stretcher. By this point, I had stopped bleeding, but the contractions were coming strong. They asked me where my baby bag was, and I was all, “I didn’t pack a bag, yet – I’m only 35 weeks pregnant!” So they told Ken to throw some stuff in a bag and follow the ambulance to the women’s hospital.

I walked down the few steps of our porch and climbed onto the stretcher. And oh yeah, I actually said, “But I’m not wearing underwear. Or a bra!” I had put a towel around my waist, but of course I was wearing one of Ken’s old t-shirts. No shower that day. The lesson here is to always be prepared.

The ambulance ride wasn’t a fast-with-a-screaming-siren drive … they just drove normal, but the guy did tell me that he had delivered his share of babies before. Um, thanks. We were chatting and joking around while he hooked up my IV (because we were still not sure that my water hadn’t broken).

I even had time to tweet.

We arrived at the hospital around 7:15, and they wheeled me right up to maternity. The lady who met us at the door joked that it’s actually cheaper to deliver a baby in the elevator or in the hallway than it is to deliver in a room, so I was asking her to please not dump me in a hall somewhere. The EMT’s told her that I was originally planning on a waterbirth, so then I said they could just take me to the fountain out front – that has to be cheap, right?

Once I got into the room, I changed into a hospital gown, and then all the check-in stuff went on for what seemed like forever. No one checked me due to the blood, so for a few hours, we really had NO CLUE what had happened or what was going to happen.

All I know is that they gave me something to stop labor around 9’ish and then determined via ultrasound that it was a placental abruption.

an obstetric catastrophe (complication of pregnancy), wherein the placental lining has separated from the uterus of the mother. It is the most common pathological cause of late pregnancy bleeding. In humans, it refers to the abnormal separation after 20 weeks of gestation and prior to birth. It occurs in 1% of pregnancies world wide with a fetal mortality rate of 20–40% depending on the degree of separation. Placental abruption is also a significant contributor to maternal mortality. Many women can die from this type of abnormality.

They were telling me that if that was the only problem [since I had stopped bleeding] they would stop labor and I’d be on serious bedrest … at the time, I assumed they meant at home, but later found out they meant at the hospital. That I would not leave until I delivered the baby.

The OB that I ended up seeing scheduled a fetal monitoring specialist to come do a more extensive ultrasound the next morning, and then I had the longest night of my life. Couldn’t sleep, was hooked up to about 17 monitors and an IV pole, had to pee every 30 minutes. Pure misery.

[part two here]

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