As we entered the second trimester the doctor had placed me on a normal appointment schedule and seemed confident that everything would be okay. I was feeling better about it too. Late August, things changed. I had a large gush of blood while I was outside with the boys one afternoon. As the day went on, it continued to get worse. The gushes would completely saturate a heavy absorption pad. I had read stories about women who literally bled like a faucet with a SCH, and things were still alright. I wasn’t panicked but I let my doctor know what was going on. Ultrasound indicated baby was doing well.
This continued off and on until the end of the pregnancy. For about a month I was wearing 2 heavy urine pads inside of a Depends and that was still not enough to catch all of the blood. They simply couldn’t absorb it fast enough. This put periods and postpartum bleeding to shame. It was unreal. The hematoma was destroying my life. I couldn’t go anywhere because I didn’t want to bleed all over the place in public. I couldn’t lift my boys or play with them like I usually did. I wasn’t able to keep up with the house. I had to stop breastfeeding Asher before we were ready. Many nights I got very little sleep because I was waiting for the bleeding to slow down. Above all I was terrified of losing my baby. I spent more time in prayer than I ever had. I was tired.
We learned at our anatomy scan that we were having another precious boy. We had no problems other than the massive clot. They scheduled a follow up ultrasound in 3 weeks and sent us on our way. My doctor told me at my 20 week appointment that he had never had a woman who didn’t have their SCH resolve by 20 weeks. The man has delivered over 10,000 babies and he was in uncharted waters. I still couldn’t bring myself to make a pregnancy announcement. I joined a support group on Facebook. This was my greatest resource for information. It seemed that no one in this group had as much bleeding as me. Regardless, they were all I had.
I decided to arm myself with information. I did lots of research on preterm labor and joined an AMAZING group Twenty Two Matters. They advocate for care of micro preemies born between 21 and 23 weeks. These are babies who often times have a chance at survival with proper intervention, but hospitals usually will not treat without having their arm twisted pretty hard. I had NIH studies saved to my phone. I had bookmarked an executive order from President Trump. It requires hospitals who are capable to treat these babies if the parents request or lose federal funding. Knowledge is power and I had it. I was ready to fight if needed.
October 9th is when the real problems started. I lost a bunch of mucous that morning. I was told previously that I didn’t have a mucous plug. Under normal circumstances I would have assumed that’s what this was. These were not normal circumstances. I had been passing mucous for weeks. Perhaps the oddest occurrence was that I stopped bleeding. After 17 weeks straight of bleeding, nothing. A couple hours later I started having mild contractions. They were a little more painful than typical Braxton-Hicks, but they were not like labor contractions. The contractions were not regular, getting closer together, or increasing in intensity. I wasn’t leaking amniotic fluid. My son’s heartbeat was a normal rate. I made the decision if they did not stop soon, I would go to the hospital to get checked out. They stopped in the afternoon. Business as usual, minus the blood. I was thrilled about that. Before I went to bed that night, I checked the baby’s heartbeat one more time. We were good to go, and I went to sleep.
I woke up at 3:30 in the morning with a pain in my upper left abdomen reaching to my back. This was a unique pain which I had never felt before. Honestly, it didn’t feel pregnancy related. I suspected otherwise. After about 10 minutes the pain went away so I went back to bed in hopes of falling asleep. The contractions started again. Only this time, I knew it was the real deal.
I woke Jim up and called Labor and Delivery to let them know that I was coming. As soon as my mother arrived to watch the kids, we were out the door. On the way to the hospital, I told Jim that this wasn’t going to end well. It hurt too much. We prayed together. I remained calm as we walked into the hospital for my own sanity and pain management. It turns out that was a mistake…
