Inside My Womb

My last pregnancy nearly killed me. I knew from the start there was something very different about this pregnancy. But I never imagined things would play out the way they did. I never associated bleeding with pregnancy, the two just didn’t go together, but this pregnancy I bled the entire time (see my previous blog posts My Precautionary Pregnancy: Praying for Our Happily Ever After and The Top). So much so that at 22 weeks I was taken by ambulance in the dark of night to hospital and that is where I stayed until our beautiful baby girl was born.

Five weeks I spent in my small hospital room, confined to my bed, allowed up only for toileting (although I did experience the bed pan several times) and night time showers where husband would clean me and dress me and put me back in bed. I learnt the hospital by its ceilings as I was wheeled off for various scans, and alien like tests that involved being placed in tiny tubes and injected with dye and laying very still visualizing our family happy, together and complete at the end of all of this. My mornings were filled with medicines, doctors rounds, poking and prodding, canular re-sites every third day and lots of needles. I lived in thick heavy pads that my children called nappies. I became weaker and weaker and my hair grew out of control as I became unkempt, unable to do any self maintenance as my movements were limited to the bare necessities needed to survive. I had a job to do, I had to keep our baby inside me. As the weeks passed the walls of my hospital room filled with artwork from my children. My eldest child’s first day at big school came and went, as did many birthdays and celebrations. I stared at a photo of my children every day and a scan image of our baby growing inside me. They kept me going.

Missing my family terribly I cried, a lot, so much so that social workers and counselors were called in on several occasions.”How can we help you?’ they would ask gently. “You can’t” I would sob loudly. Some days I felt like ending things so I could go home to my kids. I knew if I walked the hallway I would surely bleed enough the doctors would be forced to deliver our baby, but I am her mother, I could never hurt her. So I stayed, in my bed, as still as possible, enduring needle after needle, infusion after infusion, heavy bleeds that left me soaked in blood and clenching to keep our baby inside me, to grow her for longer. I felt fear every night, scared I would wake up in a pool of blood. I had heard the alarms sound several times during my stay on the ward. Running feet followed the alarms and another woman would be rushed into theater. “Please God, don’t let that be me, please let us have a planned delivery at a time safest for baby and me”.

It’s a scary, lonely place when you are told if you deliver early your baby won’t be saved. “But I can feel her kicking inside me, she wants to live!” I would plead with our OB. “All babies want to live” he would solemnly respond. So I made a tally of the days. Each milestone was celebrated quietly. The steroid injections at 24 weeks, the declaration our baby was to be resuscitated at 25 weeks after another bloody scare, her continued weight gain at each growth scan, all celebrated quietly by husband and I as I held on, willing my body to maintain my baby even though the pregnancy was slowly killing me. The uncertainty of our eventual outcome was distressing. One day we would be told we could make it to 32 weeks gestation, the next we were told to prepare for delivery after the next big bleed.

Laying in bed one quiet Sunday in hospital, I listened as my mother discussed outside world events whilst I seethed in pain. After watching me slowly deteriorate my mother’s concern grew. “Call the nurse” she urged. “It’s just back pain from being in bed so long,” I insisted, knowing I already had positional bed sores and joint pain. I had witnessed my youthful fit body become a withered aching mess during my time in hospital. Nearly every movement hurt so I wasn’t surprised by the back pain. But in a blur of a few hours I was in labor ward sobbing, writhing in agony as full blown contractions painfully struck, wave after wave after wave. The contractions had consistently been 2 minutes apart for the better half of the afternoon.

I was given morphine among other narcotics to try and stop the labor. Half an hour of hallucinations later, my husband now at my bedside, the pain returned with full force. Within hours I was pleading for the doctors to deliver my baby. “It’s not a good time, your baby is very small,” they would repeat as if waiting until Monday morning would make the world of difference. Our obstetrician was off duty for the weekend and his stand in was hesitant to deliver. I knew the complexity of our situation, I had regular consults with various doctors about how delivery would take a team of players from different departments and a lot of planning. There was to be interventional radiology, gynecological oncologists, anesthetists, obstetricians, neonatologists, urologists and the list went on. I had been diagnosed with stage 4 placenta previa and placenta increta/percreta with the placenta looking to  invade my bladder. I knew the pressure from laboring would eventually cause me to hemorrhage and jeopardize my life and that of my baby.

I can’t even describe the pain I was in, the fear I felt, the genuine thought I was going to die. I had wanted four kids my entire life, I never imagined my life long dream might cost me my life. At some stage that evening the room filled with doctors. Huddled in small groups they debated my prognosis whilst I begged for them to deliver my baby. Yes I knew she was only 26 weeks gestation, but I am her mum and I also know she is a fighter, and I knew to my core if she wasn’t born that night I would surely die. I heard scary words being tossed about as my temperature continuously rose and my heart rate grew quicker and quicker until my neck veins throbbed and bulged so much the room stopped and stared at me. “Septic”, said one voice, “abrupting” said another as she lay her hand on my contracting belly.

Finally things began moving, I had a catheter inserted with quite the audience to my overgrown nether regions. Arterial lines were put in place and I felt warm blood stream from my wrists as the doctor poked me with needles trying to find veins as I began to hemorrhage. He stitched me like a patchwork bear as he ensured the needle stayed in place. I retched forward and vomited. “As I walk through the shadow of the valley of death I fear no evil” swirled about my head. I looked at my husband now in scrubs. “Tell my kids I love them, tell them every day I love them more than anything. I love you. I love you.” Again I vomited. And with that I was wheeled into theater. I felt a warm pool swell around my crotch and the sensation of water running off the table. I knew if I looked I would see red, I kept focusing on my husband’s worried face. A man in a suit entered the theater and announced he is the gynecological oncologist. I swear I saw a cape flapping in the wind behind him, he would be the man to save my life. Placed onto a cold, hard table, more needles being stabbed into my arms, a face mask held tight against my cheeks, I hear “Rachel, keep your eyes open as long as possible”. I look up at four sets of eyes, green eyes, blue eyes, brown eyes, and then blackness.

Sometime the following day I open my eyes, I see a blurry blue figure approaching me. I can’t move my arms, my hands are strapped to a bed, I can’t talk, I am intubated, I am prisoner in this white sterile room. The figure speaks, “I have seen your baby, she is beautiful”. A tear streams down my cheek and I see darkness once more. In a blur of just over a day I slowly have lines removed. First the intubator is removed, then the arterial lines, next the feeding tube comes out and over the course of just over a week whilst I recover in maternity ward I eventually have my central line and canulars removed and finally the catheter and urine bag is taken away. All the while a small pink stain in the shape of a tiny footprint remains on my right hand. “It’s just some of the antiseptic wash”, nurses tell me. But I like to believe its a sign my baby girl is with me, fighting as I am, so our family can finally be together and complete.

Slowly pieces of the puzzle are handed to me in the week following delivery. The anesthetist visits me, “You are lucky to be alive, you crashed in theater, you had your body’s volume of blood transfusions”. The gynecological oncologist comes to see me, “We removed your uterus, the tubes, your cervix and part of your bladder. The placenta was attached to your bladder but you should be able to wee normally once you are healed. It will take three months before you feel normal again, but many more months to recover”. My mother helps me up for the first time, it is incredibly painful. I look at the wound on my belly, the length of my abdomen is cut, sewn back together and stapled. I can finally see my legs, they are skinny, I have lost most of my muscle mass. But I have not lost my will to live. Clutching my mother and a midwife I stand for the first time post surgery. I am shaky and out of breath. I have had chest pain for weeks now and need follow up with a cardiologist, but I know my heart is strong, it is filled with fear right now but mostly love. I know I need to make it to NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) to meet my baby.

As I see my body, now rearranged, distorted, I cry, “I’m a monster. A patchwork bear monster”. My arms are bruised with puncture marks from the needles, and whilst the swelling has gone from my limbs I see how frail I have become. I have a snake like line down my abdomen and a bandage on my neck from where the central line was removed. Slowly I learn to walk again, my mother washes me, she washes my feet, gently and with the love only a mother can provide. Next she holds my hands and strokes my hair as I have needles removed and bandages taken away. I am urged to go and see my daughter but I am also scared. I held her inside me as long as I could, but I feel guilty.

I am worried I won’t bond with my baby. I hear other babies on the ward scream and their mothers comfort them whilst I pump breast milk into a sterile plastic container. All I hear is the mechanical motion of the breast pump. But the day comes when I have enough strength to be taken in a wheel chair to meet my daughter. As I am pushed towards her humidicrib I am overcome with anxiety. I have washed my hands several times and am fearful I might hurt her. The cover is lifted from her crib and I see my baby for the first time, perfectly formed, tiny and covered in lines connected to large machinery keeping her alive. Then she cries. I didn’t know such a small baby could cry but in that instant I am scrambling to comfort her. My mothering instinct is in gear and I want to hold my baby immediately.

I am allowed to place my hand inside a small window in her crib. It is like placing my hand inside my womb. I touch her tiny hand and she grabs hold. She quickly settles and I watch as her legs stretch out. These are the movements I felt inside me. A few days later and I am allowed to hold her. Nervous at first, I am in pure bliss when she is placed on my naked chest. She snuggles between my breasts and I am in love. All my physical pain slips away and for the first time in months I am calm.

I am now home and on the long road to recovery and husband and I are learning how to be NICU parents. The endless waiting to hold our baby, the process it takes to touch our baby, to cradle her. All the things most parents of newborns take for granted. When I was pregnant I would see other pregnant mothers holding their toddlers, going about their lives as normal,  whilst I was wheeled around in a wheel chair on the few outings I had, my toddler unable to be held by me, my kids not being chased by me. And now as a mother of a newborn, instead of coming home to a bassinet filled with love, I come home to an expressing station and a diary charting my breast milk production, a box filled with medications and a large cut that will take time to heal. Uncertainty looms over our future. Our baby’s early delivery and the circumstances surrounding it and what impact this might have on her can’t be known for months, even years. And any phone call makes us jump. But we are alive, we are alive! My baby is a fighter, and whilst I grapple with the guilt that I could have done more for her, I know I am also a fighter and I did fight for her and for me. We fought and we won!