So It Is A Little Late

Okay, so here is the story. Warning: Not a story I would want to read while pregnant!

On Sept. 13th I had this strange feeling that I should not leave the house. I did not go to my friend's baby shower (her due date was two days after mine), I did not go to my parent's house to do laundry, and I did not attend my really good friend's birthday dinner. On the other hand I did insist on going to Meijer to buy lots of frozen foods and baby stuff. We finally returned from this shopping trip around 2 AM and went to bed around 5 or so. (Hey, we had a lot of stuff to do! lol)

On Sunday Sept. 14 I woke up around 7:30 AM with pain on my right side. I woke Rod up and asked him to finish packing the hospital bags just in case. We had actually packed the bags the night before, but I wanted him to double check that we had everything. After checking the bags Rod, of course, went back to sleep! I tried to stay relaxed and go back to sleep, but the pain would not go away. At points the pain was pretty intense and then it would recede. The problem was that I was pretty sure it was not contractions. I did not really have any tightening and the pain was only on the right side. I also knew that the little bit of tightening I did feel was not really in the right place.

Around 9 AM I sent a text message to a friend who had a baby last March and told her what was going on. She said that it could be early labor and suggested that I wait an hour and then call the doctor if things did not improve. Of course, I did not take her advice. I told her that I had only had 2 hours of sleep and if it is early labor that I am going to go back to sleep while I still could!

When I woke up again I had a text message from her asking me to keep her updated. So, I got up and texted her back while walking to the bathroom. I told her that the pain was less, but still present and then joked about how Rod slept through the whole thing. Right after I sent the text I looked down and the toilet bowl was full of blood!

At this point I gently tried to wake Rod (from the bathroom) in a way that would not cause him to panic. I told him that he needed to call the answering service for the OB office and find me some clothes. After seeing him pass by the bathroom door several times I told him to hand me the phone so he could look for the clothes. Can you believe that we were actually on hold?! Eventually Rod brought me a pair of underwear (a cute pair *sigh*) and I hung up on the answering service, grabbed a pad, and decided to go find the rest of my clothes myself. I seriously only got maybe 5 feet from the bathroom and could feel that I was still gushing.

At this point I grabbed my clothes and ran back into the bathroom and told Rod to grab the bags and put them in the car. A few seconds later I heard Rod say something and I told him fuck the bags we need to go now or call 911! We rushed to the car and started making our way to the hospital. Of course, Rod stops at the first red light. When he stopped at the 2nd I told him, "honk and go baby! Honk and go!"

When we got to the hospital I told them that I was gushing blood and they handed me paper work. I told Rod that he needed to fill it out. At this point a nurse said she would take me back to triage while Rod filled out the papers. Once she took me back to the room she calmly told me to put on the gown and settle myself on the table. I looked at her with a confused, but calm, face and confirmed that she actually wanted me to take off my underwear too. She said yes and I reiterated that I was gushing blood. She let me know that that is what the blue pad is for. I again told her that I am gushing and she said that she could get me a towel. I let her win this round. So, I hop up on the table, take off my underwear, and quickly shove the poor white towel between my legs. I then held up my completely soaked underwear with saturated pad with my index finger and calmly (with a taste of my well known sarcasm) asked her, "what should I do with these?" Not really paying attention she told me that I can throw them away or take them home and try to wash them. I told her that I was pretty sure that they are goners. At this point she turned around with a personal belongings bag in her hand and realized that I was actually serious when I said that I was gushing! Finally!!

At this point everything started to happen very fast. She checked to see how much I was bleeding and calmly went to the phone and said that so-n-so was needed in the room immediately. Only she did it in a way to not upset me. Kind of funny since I was obviously calm and trying to get her to realize how bad it was. Within minutes there were several more people in the room.

Totally long story shortened only slightly? They realized that my water had not broken and that it really was just blood. At this point Rod started to realize how serious the situation really was. Within a minute or two they were rushing me off for an emergency c-section. It was 12:01 PM when I sent the text message and realized I was bleeding and Aiden was born at 12:41 PM. That is how fast everything happened!!!

When I woke up in recovery everyone was saying that it was a miracle that Aiden had survived and that my quick thinking and ability to stay calm saved his life. Turns out that I had a placental abroption and my placenta was functioning at 40% at delivery. Aiden was not breathing and was revived after 30 seconds of chest compressions. Due to the nature of his delivery he spent 9 days in NICU.

Three weeks later everything is fine. We are still trying to get settled, but everything is getting better everyday.