Well, I'm in the hospital again. Two weeks postpartum and I'm back again! Totally unexpected.
I woke up this morning at about 3 am. I felt really wet and looked to see that not only had I bled through my pad but through all my clothes and onto the bed. When we left the hospital two weeks ago the nurse gave me some reading material. In one of them it said that if you pass a clot the size of your fist or larger OR you bleed through more than one pad in an hour you should seek emergency care.
So I changed myself and just waited a little bit. By this time I had woken Chris and enlisted his help too in cleaning up the bed etc.. Within 15 minutes I had bled not through a whole pad, but close and when I went to the bathroom I passed a clot about 3 inches in diameter. Not as big as my fist...but still enough to alarm me. (Hope you don't get queezy, here's a pic---crazy big right?)
It was now around 4am and I wasn't quite sure what to do. None of the urgent cares were open and I really didn't want to be charged for going into emergency if it ended up being nothing. But, lucky for us I am on Medicaid and our packet said it's only a small fee if they send you away. So despite not really wanting to go to the ER (afraid of what that meant) we decided it was better be turned away than to ignore it and suffer the potentially harmful consequences.
So we went. Packed little Maelynn up (which btw through this whole thing she's been such a trooper) and headed to the ER at UVRMC.
As soon as I stood up out of the car I could feel a rush of blood. I checked myself in and they triaged me pretty quickly and took me back. When I changed into my gown I then understood what they ment by a a clot the size of your fist! It was almost like taking a fish out of my pants!! And when I saw that I thought, we sure did make the right decision.
Bleeding like crazy they took me to ultrasound to see what was going on. Sometimes after a delivery the placenta isn't all taken out. It leaves remnants that can become infected and cause inflammation and bleeding of the endometrium. But when all was said and done, the techs didn't seem to find anything. So they put me on pitocin and a saline drip to see if we couldn't get my uterus to contract enough to stop the bleeding.
After 4 hours and a check at my blood count (35 is normal, I came in at 32, at this point it was then 26). So basically I was still losing too much blood. They had also given me a medication in hopes that it would also help, but it now seemed like we needed a little more abrasive action.
Finally an OB came in, Dr Reese. And told me the news. The bleeding wasn't going down and it looked like I had a fever. He highly suspected that there was a little tissue in the uterus and he recommended doing a D and C to clean it out.
So we did just that. I was put to sleep and first given a blood transfusion and then they did the D and C where the dr went in and basically scraped off the sides of my uterus.
The procedure was done around noon and it's now Thursday night and I'll be staying here hopefully just til tomorrow morning. I've felt pretty good but I think my ghostly coloring is what causes the nurses to want to snatch my arms every time I get up to go to the bathroom ;)
So Maelynn and I are staying the night together (daddy has work in the morning so I told him to go home an get some rest). Hopefully we get to go home tomorrow!
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