as you know, i had been on bed rest for about a week and a half. my blood pressure was great as long as i was lying down. i went to the doctor on monday, march 4th for my 40 week check up. dr. koefed really wanted to do a bpp (bio-physical profile) ultrasound to make sure allie was okay and wasn't under any stress from my blood pressure being high. during this ultrasound, the tech checks for 4 things: movement, muscle tone, amniotic fluid, and breathing. each category gets two points....totaling eight points. allie had consistently failed the breathing part 3 times in a row and did the same at this ultrasound as well. so i was hooked up to the non-stress test and monitored for 20 minutes. allie wasn't moving as much as they liked. we decided to go ahead and schedule a c-section for wednesday morning. on my way home, i get a phone call from the doctors office saying that dr. koefed wants me to come back in the morning (tuesday) for another non-stress test on allie. during that non-stress test, she had 18 minutes of absolutely no movement at all. here comes the whirlwind.....dr. koefed said that we had to have the c-section that day....march 5th. oh boy! good thing that we had the car packed and ready to go. so after running a few last minute errands, we checked into the hospital around 1 pm to get ready for the c-section at 4:30. our family and friends all came and waited anxiously in the waiting room.
4:00 rolled around and dr. koefed was actually ready to "get the party started" a little early. so we went on back and i got prepped for major surgery. the whole surgery took about 1 hr. and 15 minutes from start to finish. allie scored a perfect 10 on the APGAR test. my blood pressure dropped drastically a few times during the surgery to 90/30. my liver and kidneys were failing, but luckily i had the best O.R. staff and they took very good care of me.
on the way back to our room, we were greeted by our family and friends. they had 2 minutes to take pictures and go back to the waiting room while i had an hour of recovery time. here's where things kind of "took a turn for the worse." i remember looking at my nurse, sarah, right in the eyes and said i think a bunch of something just gushed out of me. she said very calmly "okay, let's see here." she looked and i watched her face. her pupils got really, really big. she began to push a little on my abdomen. blood began gushing out of me and huge blood clots were just coming out at a very rapid pace. i was hemorrhaging. (i didn't know that at the time). josh stood there in shock, watching as all these nurses began to crowd around me. i was given 10 pills to take as quickly as a i could, quite a few bags of fluid, a huge bag of something else, and a shot all to try to control and stop the bleeding. i remember hearing my doctor say to my very, very pale husband "if this doesn't work, we'll have to take her back to the OR for an emergency hysterectomy." all i could think was that i was way too young for all this to happen. more than 2 hours had passed (remember i was supposed to have 1 hour recovery). josh had received numerous texts and calls from our family during that time. i lost almost 3000 cc's of blood total. very, very scary. but thanks to the best hospital staff, the bleeding slowed down and once it slowed down even more, we were allowed to have a few visitors at a time.
because i had lost so much blood, i had been given a lot of fluids through my i.v. therefore, i was extremely swollen. i had to get blood work done and found out that because of everything that happened my white blood count was too low. i had to get antibiotics through my i.v.. i also had to continue to take medicine orally to control the bleeding. i found out on the day that i was being discharged that all the blood loss caused my hemoglobin to drop to 8. so i am taking an iron supplement twice a day and i'm basically on bed rest for another 2-3 weeks until the swelling goes down. i have to watch my legs for possible blood clots since i'm still so swollen.
talk about a crazy delivery, right?!? but in the end, it was so very all worth it. look at the sweet, precious little girl i got from all this. she is a great eater, sleeper, and rarely cries (knock on wood). she is very laid back and doesn't mind all the noise that jake makes. oh, and jake is absolutely in love with her. he checks on her all the time when she makes the littlest noise. he loves his "wittle sister." josh and i are both very in love with her too. we are very blessed to have our sweet little family at home. please continue to pray for us as we adjust to having two kids and pray for josh. pray that he will have the strength to take care of all of us, as i am not able to help him much at all. he has been so wonderful so far....helping me pump, feeding allie, washing dishes, cleaning up the house, taking care of jake, playing with jake, etc. he is really being both "mommy and daddy." i am so very lucky to have him as my husband!
jake admiring his little sister (first time he saw her)
i was so happy to see my little boy
our first picture as a family of four
finally going home
allie got some presents for jake
allie is grinning....she's happy to be home
