Mama Trauma Drama - Part 4

http://fireflycafe.blogspot.com/2008/05/mama-trauma-drama-part-3.html

I liked my OB, really really liked him as a person, but one of my irritations with him had been that throughout all of the excitement of my pregnancy he seemed so calm, so unfazed by what was happening. He cared, but his lack of intensity about it sort of pissed me off.In that moment, I realized that seeing him worry meant something was very wrong. I saw a bead of sweat roll down his cheek and realized I was shaking and cold.

He finally answered tha the others were working on him, and I watched my husband stand there, one hand on my son, eyes going back and forth between the two of us. A nurse answered my original question by saying "They're just trying to pink him up a bit."

I assumed the placenta was already out, so I was surprised when I heard him murmur to another nurse that it wouldn't deliver. I barely registered the two shots of pitocin they gave me to try to get it out, and I'm not sure what I thought was happening when the blood was rushing out, but I suppose I just assumed it was fluid from the pregnancy. I remember hearing what I thought was water hit the floor and wondering how their could have been any water left in the bag.

The next thing I knew, the doctor was instructing the nurse on how to press on my abdomen, and I realized his fist was inside and he was pressing from inside and out. It is a blessing in some ways that I was worried about my son, because I didn't scream until later when the numbing medicine was injected to take care of my torn urethra. That was a moment when I regretted not having any pain medication, and it would be the last time for a while that I didn't.

There are things I didn't find out until later, and there is a blessing to not knowing even if the later realization hits hard enough as is. The short version is, my son tore me up and down on his way out, but the speed of his delivery saved his life. The hemorrage after, my placenta that didn't want to deliver and my state of shock endangered my life. I didn't know until much later that the transfusion team had been called and was almost to the door when they finally got my bleeding to stop. I wouldn't know until later that Joseph's initial breathing issues were most likely because of the brewing infection he'd been living with, and that my failure to contract to deliver the placenta and the bleeding were all classic signs of infection.

I didn't know that 10 days later I'd make a call to my OB's office to tell them I was running fevers and not get a call back, or that 12 days later we'd be rushing my son to the ER, blue and limp, because he was skipping breaths. Didn't know that the infection in my cervix and uterus was also in his lungs, stealing his oxygen and was about to kill him until it almost did.

I didn't know how many times I would wonder just how much a pair of sterile gloves costs, and wonder why they couldn't have just used those when doing all those preterm labor checks.

What you don't know really can kill you.