Hemorrage

Well, this week has been alternately wonderful and completely hellish.

WARNING: This post may be a bit TMI or not for those with weak stomachs.

On the wonderful side: looking at my sweet boy, snuggling him against my chest, covering his fuzzy head with kisses and just basically falling more and more in love every single day.

As for the hellish: take breastfeeding. It has not and did not work for us for a variety of reasons (I'll post more about it later) and today I had to officially give up. It is completely breaking my heart and I can't even really bear to think about it, so I'm not going to right now.

Then there was Thursday. Ah, Thursday.

With a vaginal birth and a second degree tear, I have been hurting and bleeding for quite a while. The bleeding was finally tapering off and I was delighted.

After spending some time on the couch on Thursday, I stood up and felt a GUSH. I raced to the bathroom to discover I had gushed a fair amount of bright red blood, but it had stopped. I called my doctor and they said as long as I wasn't saturating more than a pad an hour or passing large or multiple clots, I was fine.

Later that night, I felt the weirdest sensation from "down there" and again a gush. Another race to the bathroom to discover a fairly large clot and more blood, which once again stopped after it came out. I called the doctor again and was told not to worry.

Friday I was feeling good because a while had passed since the bleeding. A good friend came by to visit us and the baby. After she left, I stood up and felt again that weird feeling and rushed to the bathroom.

This time it was like something out of a horror movie. Lots and lots of clots (which look like bright red pieces of flesh or something) and lots of blood that wasn't stopping. I watched in horror as it continued to drip into the toilet and yelled for my husband. I knew we had to go to the ER.

Packing up an infant in an emergency is never an easy thing, and as new parents I think we did a great job of not forgetting anything. Either way, it was ten minutes before we were in the car. We encountered every handicapped driver and Sunday driver in between here and the hospital and it was awful. I was beginning to cramp and feel weak and just knew something was wrong. That weird feeling and gushing continued.

Mr. M. dropped me off at the door to the ER and I staggered in, barely able to answer the questions and sign in. I don't think she believed me when I said I was bleeding a LOT, but once she got me in a room she sure did. I had to disrobe from the waist down, and once my underwear came off a clot the size of an orange hit the floor, along with a lot of blood. Her face would have been funny if I hadn't been so scared.

In no time I was in the bed with oxygen tubes in my nose, an IV dripping fluids and another (MOTHER EFFING) catheter in my bladder. Poor Mr. M. had tried to come back but since the room was such a mess they sent him and the baby away. They gave me some morphine for the cramps which helped, and the doctor finally came in to check me out.

After a bedside ultrasound and pelvic exam, she sent for a big ultrasound machine to see if it was just clots still in my uterus or if some of the placenta had stayed behind. She was pretty certain I was going to have to head up to surgery for a D&C. The ultrasound tech came in and used the F*ing catheter to FILL my bladder so that she could see - an experience I never want to have again. She saw one small clot still hanging out in my uterus but not much else.

Mr. M. and the baby were finally allowed to come back after they spent a half hour cleaning me and the room up. By then my bleeding had slowed significantly and the morphine had taken away most of the sting of the catheter. We had to wait about an hour for the ER doctor to get ahold of my doctor, but the decision was NO surgery. My doctor was sure everything (placenta and all) had come out during my delivery and that I was just passing clots. She gave me a script for a medicine to cause my uterus to contract to help stop the bleeding and an antibiotic to help fight off any infection.

Five hours later, we were home. The uterine stimulant gives me awful, contraction-like cramps and the antibiotic makes me super nauseous. But the bleeding has stopped and after passing that one last clot, I haven't seen any more.

Nothing about this pregnancy has been easy or fun. I am so ready to feel "normal" again, whatever that is.

So that's my story. Have to go now because the squirt is waking up. I promise a birth story soon.