Not As Planned

Most people can probably tell you that the birth of their babies didn’t go quite as planned or might not have gone exactly how they envisioned. I too fit into that category and I’ve debated writing this out for a long time. I wasn’t exactly sure what my message would be in writing my story or if it would resonate with people at all. The more I got to thinking however I decided I would write it simply just to share. Don’t get your hopes up on some take home message on the meaning of life or anything, but here is my story on the birth of my third child.

I had placental lakes throughout my pregnancy with my son (my middle kid) and had them as well with my third baby. Placental lakes sounds like it might possibly be a decent vacation getaway in the Florida Keys, but I can assure you it simply means I had a bleed spot on my placenta. A bleed spot meant I spent most of my pregnancies bleeding. That’s about as fun as it sounds, bleeding through a pregnancy. It means a lot of ultrasounds, lots of doctor appointments and trying not to panic. I was scheduled for a c-section with my third baby on November 18, 2017, but I was up most of the night on the 17th with a severe headache and lots of contractions. On the morning of the 17th I checked in for labor and delivery to make sure everything was alright and they informed me that we should deliver the baby today. I wasn’t too concerned and neither were the doctors- I had hit that 39 week benchmark and it didn’t matter much to deliver on the 17th or 18th, but if I was suffering headaches and in pain then they thought it best to deliver the baby.

We had to wait a bit since there was a scheduled c-section already in progress and then they were going to bring me back after that delivery was over. We hung out a bit and probably watched the Today Show. When it was our turn it happened like a whirlwind (this was my third c-section, but still I’m shocked every time how fast the whole thing happens). They had us in the room and prepped like a Nascar pit crew. I mentally tried to prep myself for the tugging that was about to happen and the helpless feeling that comes with the c-section. I think it’s almost harder to go into a c-section when you’ve done it before. Of course- you know what’s going to happen and what the recovery is like, but with the first one you get so distracted by the whole thing it’s nice to be oblivious of what’s to come. The next couple times around it’s a bit more mental. Anyways, they struggled a bit to get through my previous scar because I had a lot of scar tissue built up from our other c-sections. Once they got through that mess they pulled out the baby (for lack of a better term) and she was big (also for lack of a better term). Way bigger than we anticipated! The baby was 9 pounds 10 ounces. Her brother was 9 pounds 13 ounces so I guess I shouldn’t have been as shocked as I was. She didn’t cry much at first and I was freaking out. My husband kept walking from me to her to update me on her progress and then rush back to the baby. The baby had simply swallowed a lot of fluid on her exit into the world and they were able to clear it out and get her to cry. It was a few scary minutes, but all was good then. They brought her over to me on the operating table and let her nurse. She took to nursing right away and all was right. I was getting a tubal so while the baby nursed they quickly completed that procedure and stitched me up.

It was onto the recovery room. In that room is where my husband turned to me and said, “she doesn’t have a name yet. People want to know her name”. We struggled with deciding the name on this baby. Our other two we knew way before delivery, but this one was a bit trickier. We had narrowed it down some and then he says to me, “Can we go with Ella Leah?” and in my comatose like state I said, “Perfect”.

Little did I know comatose would be the perfect description for how the rest of the day would go. I can’t give you an exact timeline on most of the day from after that point, but my parents had met the Ella, my other two children had met the Ella and our nanny (who was also a great family friend) had met Ella. My Mother-in-Law was on her way to the hospital from the airport. I was sitting in our hospital room talking to my husband and our nanny when all the sudden things started to get fuzzy. Literally the room started to disappear. My husband said something to the extent of, “You don’t look so good” which normally I’d be offended, but in the case I couldn’t jab back. I remember him lying me back in the bed and telling me he was going to get my a Gatorade and possibly help. Our poor nanny doesn’t like hospitals or blood so I think at this point she might have made a strategic exit. Pretty soon I wasn’t able to see anything at all. My husband told me that the nurse in training came to the room first and tried to get my pulse but was thinking the machine wasn’t working properly. Soon her trainer came in took my pulse and directed the training nurse to order a CODE RED. Sounds fun right? It’s like a giant party. Apparently, when you order a CODE RED lots of people come running- faster than if you opened a bottle of rose at a party full of housewives. I don’t really remember all those who came to my party, but I do know there was a man on one side of me and a women on the other. The women kept trying to talk to me and it was like a movie where she was saying things like, “Lauren, we need you to talk to us… Lauren, can you hear me?” and I could hear her of course but I couldn’t respond. It was so odd I felt calm all over, but I kept thinking about my kids. The man on the other side kept saying a bunch of technical terms. They slapped an oxygen mask on me and put another IV in me. Finally I began to come to and started to answer the questions some what correctly. “Where are you from?” “What are you doing in the hospital?” “What’s your last name?”. They let me know that they were going to give me a blood transfusion and that I wouldn’t be able to get up the rest of the day. Normally, I long for someone to order me to lay down, but of course I wasn’t thrilled with it this time around.

So long story short, the conclusion was they weren’t exactly sure what caused me to basically flat line. The first thought was I had internal bleeding in my organs, but after some cat-scans that was determined not to be the case. They believe what happened was a muscle bleed, but it wasn’t 100% conclusive. In the days following this my stomach blew up and I turned black and blue all over. I’ll spare you the pictures, but it was hideous. I wasn’t able to wear normal pants for months after Ella’s birth and my bruising didn’t completely go away until about 2 months ago (14 months after Ella was born). To this day my stomach still looks like a nylon full of mashed potatoes, but I’m trying to embrace that. “Work those mashed potatoes” is my daily mantra.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I don’t have a take home message by sharing this, but really I am so thankful that I was able to get out of that hospital and not have many complications since Ella’s birth. Hug your loved ones and never attend a CODE RED party, especially if you’re the guest of honor.