One of the oddest things about the experience I had following birth was how unconcerned I was for my own well-being.  This is probably partly due to how woozy and out of it I was after losing so much blood; but looking back on things now, I realize that the concerns I had mainly centered around Prim, not myself. (It was only after returning from the hospital and learning that postpartum hemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal death that I think I really realized how serious of a situation it was.)

When I was home and bleeding on the couch waiting for the ambulance to arrive, KC and Yvonne were rushing around putting things together to bring to the hospital.  I was barely conscious, bleeding like crazy, but was mainly focused on making sure that they knew that there was breastmilk in the fridge from when I’d pumped earlier.

Then in the ambulance on the way to the hospital I had a little more opportunity to think about what was happening.  Yvonne came in the ambulance with me while KC drove with Prim in our car behind.  I finally asked the question that had been in the back of my mind since I’d heard Yvonne make the panicked call to 911.  “Are they going to have to remove my uterus?” Yvonne looked at me and said, “No,” which felt like the biggest relief in the world. (Literally one of the first things I said to KC after giving birth was, “Let’s have 100 more of these.”) Once the OB came in to check me at the ER, Yvonne repeated that I was worried that he would need to remove my uterus.  He confirmed, “No no no — you’d have to have waited a lot longer to come in for me to do that.”  My response was, “People wait longer than this?”

“People are stupid,” he said.

Once I’d had the procedure to remove the clot and was receiving my first bag of blood, I was able to focus a bit more.  I kept asking my nurse for a breast pump because it had been almost four hours since I’d last nursed, and I knew that Prim was in the waiting room just through the double doors.  My nurse was absolutely terrible (which was frustrating because all the nurses I’d had prior were great) and kept saying, “Oh… let me go check…” and then returning without news or a breast pump.  Finally Yvonne stepped in and asked another nurse for a pump (thank God) and it was brought in.

And though I’d been through this whole terrible ordeal (and unimaginably painful procedure), the most frustrating part of the whole visit was the fact that I’d had to have two IVs put in — one in the crook of each arm.  This meant that I couldn’t really hold, much less successfully breastfeed Prim, and even pumping involved some Cirque du Soleil-type skills, as the stupid IV monitors would beep incessantly anytime I bent my arm even a little.

But really, with a little face like this, you can kind of see why not being able to hold her is worse than any of the other crap I had to deal with at the ER. 🙂