Chaos and Cupcakes

Jared has already posted about Parker on his blog, but I thought I would write out his birth story. This might get long.

I had been having contractions every few minutes since last Thursday but they had not been intense enough to change my cervix past 3 cm so Parker was able to keep growing inside me for a few days. Then, the morning of Sunday, December 2nd, I woke up to a mild burning sensation in my stomach. It felt like I had just done a whole bunch of sit-ups. It got a bit worse throughout the morning and it hurt to cough, laugh, sneeze, etc. I thought I ought to call the doctor and just see if this was normal for someone with a previous c-section. I called him at noon and he said to come in to the hospital just to make sure everything was ok. Jared called my brother Colin and was going to go to Provo and pick him up and bring him back here to babysit but the pain was getting a bit worse. We decided to call his brother Spencer and have him come over since he is really close. Spencer arrived in a few minutes and we left for the hospital in Orem. I was 34 weeks 5 days so we chose to go to Orem Community (which we like better but doesn’t have a NICU) instead of Utah Valley, thinking if the baby was born he would be ok since he had 4 steroid shots on board and ultrasound showed him to be a healthy size. Also, my doctor could get to Orem a lot faster than he could to Utah Valley and he also prefers Orem.

On the way to the hospital, the pain started to get worse and by the time we walked in I was in too much pain to talk to the nurse. The doctor was already there waiting for us. The nurse hooked me up to the monitor. It hurt to have even the pressure of the fetal monitor on my belly. I started sweating profusely and moaning and couldn’t communicate with anyone by this point. The baby’s heartrate was really low and the dr. said it was time for this pregnancy to end. He went to scrub while I was wheeled into the OR to get a spinal. Immediately after the spinal was in, the baby’s heartrate completely crashed. The dr. had to start cutting before the spinal could take effect, before I was prepped, etc. It was just immediate. When he cut my stomach open and pulled the skin back, the placenta was right there outside of the uterus and completely detached from the baby (thus, why the baby’s heartrate had crashed- he wasn’t getting any oxygen). My uterus had completely ruptured and placenta and baby were in my abdominal cavity. The extreme pain and rock hard stomach and a sharp pain in my shoulder were caused by the fact that an enormous amount of blood was also pooled up inside my abdomen. The dr. got the baby out and handed him over to the baby’s team and kept working on me. I started going into DIC (disseminated intravascular coagulation) and into shock. My blood pressure was around 19/5.  I lost over 3 liters of blood, over half of my body’s blood volume. A hysterectomy would have been the typical fix to stop the hemorraging, but because of the DIC that would have made things even worse. Jared hadn’t been allowed into the delivery since the doctors weren’t sure if the baby or I would make it, but once they got the baby out and started getting us stabilized they let Jared in. He came in just as the doctor had my uterus out of my body and was trying to stitch it all up. We had already made the decision that Parker would be our last as my pregnancies have not been easy and since Sawyer really should have been the last after his complicated delivery. So when the doctor told us that obviously another pregnancy would be impossible, we were okay with that. He tied my tubes while he had my abdomen open. The whole surgery is pretty hazy to me as I was in and out of conciousness. I just distinctly recall the horrible pain of it all.

Parker was stabilized and then prepared for transport to Utah Valley as he needed to be in the NICU. He lost a lot of blood when the placenta detached from him. He also swallowed blood while he was out in my abdomen. This aspirated into his lungs and he was having difficulty breathing. The CPAP was not enough and he needed to be on a ventilator and to get surfactant to help his lungs. He had several x-rays done before they transported him and this showed the spots of blood in his lungs. He was brought into my room in his transport incubator so that I could see him for a minute and so Jared could give him a blessing before they transported him. Jared followed the ambulance to the hospital.

I had to have several transfusions (2 Sunday, 2 Monday, and 2 Tuesday) to make up for losing half of my blood. I also had to be treated for shock. My temperature was 93.2 and my blood pressure hovered around 47/23 for a couple of days. I had a blanket put over me that inflated with continous warm air to raise my temperature. Then I started hemorraging again and had to be given Cytotec to stop that. To deal with the pain I was in, I was given Morphine, Oxycontin, and Percocet. It was a very, very scary experience.

The doctor told us that we should name the baby “Lucky” as he is truly a miracle. He said that he should not have been able to survive this and that given just a couple more minutes, I definitely would have been gone as well. The nurses all told us that we have angels watching over us. Later when I thanked the doctor for saving us, he said it wasn’t him because medically speaking with as much damage as was done it should have been near impossible to save us, but that Heavenly Father really wanted both of us to live.

It was originally thought that I would be in the hospital for at least several days. But luckily I responded very well to the transfusions. Also, my doctor was going to be out of town from Wednesday-Monday and he was afraid that if he didn’t discharge me, the doctors on call would keep me in until he got back and he knew how badly I needed to see Parker for my emotional and mental well-being, which has a huge impact on physical recovery. So he let me go home late Tuesday night. I love my doctor! He stipulated that except for going to the NICU, I had to be in bed recovering. I got to finally hold my baby for the first time Tuesday night. He is such a sweetheart and a fighter.

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