this weekend was the scariest halloween i have ever had, but not because of demons or witches or haunted houses... no, it was blood that freaked me out this time.
thursday night i had a lovely dinner with a friend (at chopstix, mmm), and when i got home around 730 i went to get in the bath to relax for bed, and was unpleasantly surprised by the sight of blood in my underwear. bright red fresh blood. oh fuck. matt was at school and out of touch.
i ran to the bathroom chanting "no no no" and "it's ok," trying to stay calm and assess the situation. no cramping, no back pain, just blood, oh god, really blood dripping like a period. i started shaking and kept chanting as i grabbed the phone to call the midwives for help... my awesome midwife was very calm and explained my options: relax and hang out, come by for a doppler ultrasound to hear the heartbeat if any, or go the ER and find out for sure what's up. i told her i would see her in 5 minutes, hung up, and lost it. i wailed and sobbed uncontrollably and called my doula/friend/angel karen to see if she would come with me. she did.
so we got to the birth center (as another birth was happening) and i was still bleeding, so the midwife talked to us and then put the doppler--which i had previously refused--on me, and for a good 30 seconds there was nothing. i just laid there trying to accept whatever was going to happen. then all of a sudden there was this fast, intense thumping... the heartbeat... and i cried more. i felt like my heart was ripping out of my chest. i kept thinking "at least if there was no heartbeat i could accept the worst..." but there was, and i couldn't trust it to mean anything.
she said the heartbeat was good--it kicked at the doppler wand--but in the end we decided to go to the ER anyway to try to find out why i was bleeding. i called matt's academy 5 or 6 times and no one answered, so karen drove us all the way out there to hunt him down. after 20 minutes of wandering around in the dark and empty building we found someone who found matt, and we left for the hospital. poor matt was so distraught, but he stayed calm and tried to comfort me.
karen stayed with us for 2 hours or something while we waited, and then we waited for another 5 or 6 hours until finally being seen. the bleeding had long stopped, but all those delirious, hungry, late-night hours left me a lot of time to "go inside" and talk with the baby... while matt was out at one point i sunk into myself and felt like i was swimming in the placenta with the baby, and it knew me, and i cuddled it and had a serious non-verbal conversation in which it reassured me it was going to stay with us, and together we knit up the bubble around it and tightened my cervix with the understanding it would not open until we were both ready for a healthy birth. i may have been hallucinating, but i felt very sure everything was ok after that, and just kept waiting until they called us. the longer i was there the more it became clear that this is just my body's way of handling this particular pregnancy.
i was "treated" with multiple draws of blood for god-knows-what tests, i had to wear a constant blood pressure and pulse monitor (that was interesting), and they came and did two ultrasounds with visual. it was amazing to see the baby. it was much bigger than i thought, and it was moving all the time... it looked perfect. the doctor said the heartbeat was good and everything in me was "in the right place" so they left me again, then came back to do a pelvic exam. my cervix was closed and i wasn't bleeding anymore. but i knew that already...
then came the part where they freaked out about my having factor v leiden (i clot too much) and insisted i need to be at their high-risk clinic and on a daily dose of heparin. i acted very immaturely and told the resident "no" and at one point i even stuck out my tongue (but hey, it was 4am and i was loopy)... i explained that the hematologist disagrees with her, my midwives say it's ok, and i had no intention of visiting any high-risk clinics, and she stopped talking to me altogether. i seem to be really good at pissing off doctors lately.
so anyway i ended up with a shot of rhogam for the bleeding and was sent home with a cheerful "we have no idea why you were bleeding, but our collective opinion is that, since we don't know a damned thing about women's bodies, you are diagnosed with 'threatened miscarriage.' good night!" needless to say, when i bled again on saturday night--much less--i decided to stay home and rest. i rested until this morning when i got up for work.
so that was my insane weekend... i can't say it was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, but there was a deep sorrow and inability to accept the idea that i might have been losing the baby. i know, as matt said very sweetly, "we can make more babies," but it still felt so sad. and wrong. i really think i knew it was ok, because my reaction to the bleeding was that it didn't fit... nothing could be going wrong because everything was so clearly ok.
a surprising number of women actually have periods--full out periods--for the duration of their pregnancies. so i am not going to lose my head over a little bit of blood. not again, anyway. and now i am fine, with just a little bit of residual spotting of old blood. and no cramps. this baby is not going anywhere (see next post)...
thursday night i had a lovely dinner with a friend (at chopstix, mmm), and when i got home around 730 i went to get in the bath to relax for bed, and was unpleasantly surprised by the sight of blood in my underwear. bright red fresh blood. oh fuck. matt was at school and out of touch.
i ran to the bathroom chanting "no no no" and "it's ok," trying to stay calm and assess the situation. no cramping, no back pain, just blood, oh god, really blood dripping like a period. i started shaking and kept chanting as i grabbed the phone to call the midwives for help... my awesome midwife was very calm and explained my options: relax and hang out, come by for a doppler ultrasound to hear the heartbeat if any, or go the ER and find out for sure what's up. i told her i would see her in 5 minutes, hung up, and lost it. i wailed and sobbed uncontrollably and called my doula/friend/angel karen to see if she would come with me. she did.
so we got to the birth center (as another birth was happening) and i was still bleeding, so the midwife talked to us and then put the doppler--which i had previously refused--on me, and for a good 30 seconds there was nothing. i just laid there trying to accept whatever was going to happen. then all of a sudden there was this fast, intense thumping... the heartbeat... and i cried more. i felt like my heart was ripping out of my chest. i kept thinking "at least if there was no heartbeat i could accept the worst..." but there was, and i couldn't trust it to mean anything.
she said the heartbeat was good--it kicked at the doppler wand--but in the end we decided to go to the ER anyway to try to find out why i was bleeding. i called matt's academy 5 or 6 times and no one answered, so karen drove us all the way out there to hunt him down. after 20 minutes of wandering around in the dark and empty building we found someone who found matt, and we left for the hospital. poor matt was so distraught, but he stayed calm and tried to comfort me.
karen stayed with us for 2 hours or something while we waited, and then we waited for another 5 or 6 hours until finally being seen. the bleeding had long stopped, but all those delirious, hungry, late-night hours left me a lot of time to "go inside" and talk with the baby... while matt was out at one point i sunk into myself and felt like i was swimming in the placenta with the baby, and it knew me, and i cuddled it and had a serious non-verbal conversation in which it reassured me it was going to stay with us, and together we knit up the bubble around it and tightened my cervix with the understanding it would not open until we were both ready for a healthy birth. i may have been hallucinating, but i felt very sure everything was ok after that, and just kept waiting until they called us. the longer i was there the more it became clear that this is just my body's way of handling this particular pregnancy.
i was "treated" with multiple draws of blood for god-knows-what tests, i had to wear a constant blood pressure and pulse monitor (that was interesting), and they came and did two ultrasounds with visual. it was amazing to see the baby. it was much bigger than i thought, and it was moving all the time... it looked perfect. the doctor said the heartbeat was good and everything in me was "in the right place" so they left me again, then came back to do a pelvic exam. my cervix was closed and i wasn't bleeding anymore. but i knew that already...
then came the part where they freaked out about my having factor v leiden (i clot too much) and insisted i need to be at their high-risk clinic and on a daily dose of heparin. i acted very immaturely and told the resident "no" and at one point i even stuck out my tongue (but hey, it was 4am and i was loopy)... i explained that the hematologist disagrees with her, my midwives say it's ok, and i had no intention of visiting any high-risk clinics, and she stopped talking to me altogether. i seem to be really good at pissing off doctors lately.
so anyway i ended up with a shot of rhogam for the bleeding and was sent home with a cheerful "we have no idea why you were bleeding, but our collective opinion is that, since we don't know a damned thing about women's bodies, you are diagnosed with 'threatened miscarriage.' good night!" needless to say, when i bled again on saturday night--much less--i decided to stay home and rest. i rested until this morning when i got up for work.
so that was my insane weekend... i can't say it was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, but there was a deep sorrow and inability to accept the idea that i might have been losing the baby. i know, as matt said very sweetly, "we can make more babies," but it still felt so sad. and wrong. i really think i knew it was ok, because my reaction to the bleeding was that it didn't fit... nothing could be going wrong because everything was so clearly ok.
a surprising number of women actually have periods--full out periods--for the duration of their pregnancies. so i am not going to lose my head over a little bit of blood. not again, anyway. and now i am fine, with just a little bit of residual spotting of old blood. and no cramps. this baby is not going anywhere (see next post)...
Posts
Post a Comment