Levi's Birth Story Part 3

Saturday May 7th, sometime after 8:59 AM

Even though Levi was born, my work was not done. I still had to deliver the placenta. With Evelyn the placenta came pretty easily on it's own and we delayed cutting the cord for a good hour. Levi's cord was much shorter and I couldn't even sit comfortably with him in Mike's arms because the cord was so short. So we ended up cutting the cord much sooner than I had wanted too. Once the cord was cut I focused on getting the placenta out. Though I was able to get some of it out I really really needed to pee and the urge to pee was overshadowing the urge to push the placenta out. After a little while of trying to get the placenta out on my own I asked to go to the hospital bed and have Dr. Martin help get the placenta out by manipulating the cord and pushing on my stomach (not as painful as it sounds, except that I had to pee the whole time!). Finally when we thought that enough of the placenta was out I asked to go pee.

The nurse and Cindy my doula walked with me to the bathroom. I almost made it to the bathroom and then I got dizzy and blacked out. I fell to the floor and the nurse and Cindy thankfully caught me so I didn't hit my head. This whole time Mike was in the bathroom, he came out and saw me passed out and bleeding. I passed out from the blood loss, my uterus did not properly clamp down after the placenta came out and so I kept bleeding. When I came to they got me to the toilet and I finally pee'd. It felt great. But I passed out again in the bathroom after I pee'd. I was still losing too much blood. Mike, the nurse, and Cindy were helping me. They got a wheelchair and wheeled me back to the bed and got me in bed. At this point I was freezing cold and shaking. They put warm blankets on me and the nurse called Dr. Martin to check me and make sure that all the placenta had come out. It had, but they needed to give me medicine to get my uterus to clamp down and stop bleeding. The nurse put an IV with pitocin in my arm and continued to monitor me for the next 2 hours to see if the bleeding slowed. Thankfully the bleeding did slow. Once I was deemed stable they moved me up to the recovery room with Levi.

This whole situation was very unexpected. After recovering it appears that my uterus was displaced by my overly full bladder and that is why it didn't clamp down correctly on its own, hence the blood loss. I lost 2 units of blood when it was all said and done. Thankfully I didn't lose more or they would have had to do a blood transfusion and I did not want that! For this reason I am super glad I was in a hospital for this birth. I think the situation could have been avoided though. The hospital and my doctor both said that once I got in the birth pool I could not get out or they would make me stay out. I didn't think that would be a big deal but obviously if I had felt like I could get out of the pool to pee and then get back in I probably wouldn't have had the whole displaced uterus/blood loss issue. So for next time I will make it clear that I want to be able to get in and out of the birth pool as I please and I'll just sign a waiver if they don't want to be liable.

Me getting wheeled up to the recovery room, I still had the pitocin IV in my arm.