A Christmas to Remember

Merry Christmas!!

We had a pretty simple Christmas this year, with all kinds of traditions pared back or modified.  The kids didn't mind at all; as you can see from the picture above, Christmas morning was just as filled with slightly bleary-eyed  excitement as ever.  Terence and I sat back and just basked in the feeling of being home and all together as a family.  A lot of the harried "let's make this holiday perfect" stuff just didn't matter.  That tends to happen when you've just gotten home from the hospital.

My body decided to give everyone a scare the Thursday night before Christmas.  I had taken the kids to ride the train in Scottsdale with my parents and sisters' families (there are lots of fun lights displays and we do this nearly every year).  Things seemed to be just fine-- the bleeding I had been having the week before had lightened up considerably and I felt great.  But just when I got off the train I felt a sudden gush that I immediately knew was not a good sign. I passed off S and raced for the bathroom to find that I was bleeding like crazy again.  I was having awful cramps, too, the kind that feel more like labor pains than period cramps.

Not a good sign, but I figured that if I could rest for awhile it would slow down like it had in the past.  My mother drove us back to her home and I figured we'd wait there awhile until I was feeling better, but things just kept getting worse and worse.  Finally, I realized that things were not slowing down and I needed to go to the ER.  My dad drove me over to the hospital and stayed with me until Terence could get there from work.

Even in the ER the bleeding just wouldn't stop.  They checked my blood levels and said my blood count still looked OK.  They gave me a shot of some kind of drug that was supposed to help slow things down, though I couldn't see any difference.  After consulting with the on-call OB, the ER doctor decided to send me home with the understanding that I would get in to see my OB first thing in the morning.  The nurse left me to get dressed, and as soon as I stood up, the world starting spinning and going fuzzy and dark and I was sure I was going to throw up.  Terence called anxiously for the nurse and they quickly decided I was in no shape to go anywhere.  We spent the next four hours in the ER while they decided what they could possibly do with me.  They tried to get me to the bathroom once and the same near-passing-out experience happened; clearly I was not doing so well even if my blood counts technically looked OK.

When they finally got a hold of my OB, she scheduled me for a D&C first thing Friday morning.  The D&C went well-- I had no reactions to the general anesthesia or anything.  But when I was in recovery, my OB came and gave me the news.  The hemorrhaging had gone on so long that my blood counts had dropped too low-- I needed to have a blood transfusion with two pints of blood.  As for why I was having all this crazy bleeding, apparently I had a combination of all kinds of problems.  First, my uterus is not contracting back up.  She said instead of being firm and tight like it should be by now, it is like a floppy fish.  Second, I had a placental inversion something-or-other (I guess the scab from the site where the placenta was connected to my uterus had come off and bled profusely.)  Finally, I have a fibroid in my uterine wall that was probably making it extra difficult for my uterus to contract down.

So what does that mean for me?

In a nutshell: no more pregnancies.

The news was not a surprise-- I think the Spirit had been preparing me for it during those long, scary hours in the ER.  Terence and I had already thought we were done, but this felt so final.  S is such a beautiful miracle, but she will be the last child I bear, unless I want to risk my life.  It was a little hard to hear, but I felt comforted.  At least we have five beautiful children, and I am grateful for each and every one of them.

We spent the next day still in the hospital as I recovered from the D&C and received the blood transfusions. (I had no idea it would take so long.  A transfusion of one pint of blood takes 3-4 hours.  Maybe they can do it faster in an emergency, but it was a long, slow process in my case.)  They also gave me a load of pitocin and methergine, hoping to force my uterus into contracting itself down.  Saturday afternoon, after I proved I could walk up and down the hospital corridors without bleeding heavily or passing out, they finally released me so I could be home with my family for Christmas.

The best Christmas present I received by far!