Sunday, January 19, 2014

Sweet Lamby's Premature Birth Story Due to Placenta Abruption


Sweet "Lamby" was due on January 7, 2014. Our third child and first BOY, much to our surprise! This pregnancy just felt… different. I couldn’t explain the difference, but I felt myself uttering those words over and over. Everything was going smoothly, as far as the doctor could tell, until one day in mid October. I was babysitting that day when I felt (Get ready for it, I told you not for the faint of heart!) a surge of warm fluid… every expectant mother’s worst nightmare! I ran to the restroom praying “No, this couldn’t be!”. Yet, it was true. Bleeding immensely, I quickly text (I just wasn’t ready to utter the words of what was happening) the parents of the kiddos I was watching. Next I called my husband. He was working over 45 minutes away that day. I called my mom, brother and dad… Everything was a blur. When the second mom came to pick up her baby, she could see all over my face that I was freaking out. Thankfully, she drove me to the closest hospital where my brother’s girlfriend met us to help watch “Bells” and “Tangled”. I spent the next 24 hours in the hospital (not the hospital I was to deliver in, but the closest hospital to home). I learned that I was experiencing a placenta abruption. Placenta abruptions happen when the placenta prematurely separates. It should separate after delivery as it is the baby’s life source. Placenta abruption only happens in about 1% of pregnancies. I did not fit into any of the typical reasons for this happening.

 

At this point, I was 28 weeks pregnant. To say I was terrified was an understatement. After lots of testing, and a very impersonal on staff OB, I was released 24 hours later with a contraction stopping medication and told to follow up with my OB. I spent the next week (still bleeding) on strict bed rest. [Bed rest is definitely NOT what I had always imagined it to be! I had visions of laying around in my jammies, watching all the Jane Austen movies my heart could handle and eating bon bons (to be quite honest, I have not a clue what bon bons are, but they sound quite magical!)... Oh, that was not the case! Watching people take care of my children and clean my house was incredibly hard! I'm ever so thankful for my amazing family (my mom especially) and friends who babysat, cleaned and cooked for us] After a visit with my OB, she sent me to a specialist, a perinatologist. The (quirky) specialist said that I had a large blood clot in the uterus from the bleeding. She sent me across the hospital to have my first steroid shot to help develop Lamby’s lungs. I was also told to immediately STOP taking the contraction stopping medication. She said that I needed to feel the contractions, as they could be a sign of severe internal bleeding that I would need to know about. That night, I don’t even remember jumping out of bed and going into the bathroom. I screamed for my husband. My bathroom and the trail leading to it looked as if someone had been severely wounded! Blood was everywhere! We gathered our two girls and headed straight for the hospital, a thirty minute drive in perfect traffic. This time, to the hospital I was to deliver at, the hospital with a Level 3 NICU.

 

Arriving at the hospital, I was rushed to Labor and delivery. At this point I was 29 weeks. I could tell by the look on the nurses faces and the amount of staff coming in and out of the room, that things were not good. Thankfully, Lamby’s heart rate was stable. It was about 1AM when the OB on call came in to check me. We were attempting to hold off delivery as long as possible to give the steroids time to do it’s job. Instead of the usual 24 hours, I was given my second steroid shot 12 hours after the first. Things stabilized until the following day when Lamby’s heart rate started to dip. An anesthesiologist was sent in to prepare me for the fact that I was to have a cesarean and that I would not be awake for the delivery because of the circumstances. I was terrified, yet oddly comforted by the fact that I would not be awake. Lamby’s heart rate came back up, so we decided to hold off on the cesarean as we were still trying to give his lungs as much time as possible to mature. We were stabilized and moved to the antepartum area.

 

Monday, four days later, my husband had returned to work. I was wheeled over for another in-depth ultrasound with the perinatologist, my first “outing” in a week! I was so happy to be out of that hospital room! I couldn’t care less that I was being rolled through the hospital in a gown looking like a mess. I was that girl that no one in the perinatologist office wanted to be… the one being wheeled over from the antepartum area of the hospital… the girl that I had seen and felt so sorry for the week before while sitting in that same office. We learned from that visit that the clot had grown even larger. Lamby looked good though.

 

My aunt and cousin were visiting me in the hospital room that same day when that all too familiar feeling came back. I had started bleeding again. This time the OB arrived with a worried look on her face. As she paced back and forth, I waited impatiently for her decision hoping they would deliver my sweet boy before the unspeakable happened. She spoke up “We will do this as organized as possible. Unless something happens, prepare for delivery in 3 hours.”. Those were the longest three hours!Through bleeding and contractions I called my husband and mother to inform them that today would be the day, hurry and get to the hospital, but PLEASE don’t tell the girls!! I had never had a C-section before. The pregnancies with my daughters were very uneventful, “normal” pregnancies and births. Everything was so terrifying to me… Would my baby be ok? Will I be ok? After all, I had a hemorrhage cart outside of my room for a good amount of my stay as well as an extra IV line as a “just in case you need a transfusion”.

 

While prepping for surgery my water broke. Let me just be real and say, I did not handle the C-section as well as all those beautiful, make-up clad, perfect hair mommas out there that I see pictures of with their babies in the OR room! I was a sweaty, anxiety-ridden, numb handed, trying not to vomit mess. It didn’t help any that my OB was yelling at the nurse “Why isn’t Dr—– here? I’m not comfortable with this situation… Call Dr—– from my practice!”. Those aren’t very comforting words to hear coming out of your very experienced OB’s mouth, especially while laying 29weeks 6days pregnant on an operating table! The good news is, our prayers were answered and everything went well! Lamby was born at a whopping 3lbs 3oz! He was whisked away to the NICU with daddy, but he was ALIVE, thank God! I’ll save the NICU story for another day…
 

 

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