I guess its a good sign that I've had enough sleep to be able to have insomnia. I figure I might as well write some of my thoughts down, probably won't have time again for a while: I'll definitely be out cold after the next pumping session ;)

First off, I suppose that calling the bleeding stuff a near death experience was rather over-dramatic. In truth I don't really know how close to disaster it was. It was definitely bad :)

That episode started after the birth. I'd told the doctor about how my mother had almost died from bleeding to death after I was born, and that she thought it was because her uterus hadn't closed up afterward. So the doc assured me that it wouldn't happen to me, and gave me some pictocin right away for good measure.

In retrospect, it seems that the actual problem in my case was probably that there were still bits of placenta left inside when I closed up. As the doctor warned when he was pushing on my stomach trying to get the pieces out after the delivery, when bits of placenta are left, they continue sucking blood, and if they're not all taken care of you have to be opened back up to have them removed.

Its partly my fault that he didn't get them all for having tensed.=20 He kept pushing hard on my belly to see if all the bits were gone. It hurt a lot and I was unable to resist fighting back with my stomach muscles in response. However, he knew I was doing this, did a vaginal ultrasound to look for clots, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has responded this way: its hard not to tense in response to intense pain! Anyway, he thought everything was out, and it wasn't, regardless of where the fault lies.

Birthing the placenta sucked in general. It took a long time, and was painful. As with most of the after birth stuff, not so sharp, just a long dull pain that lasted for many hours. Even after that, the pain didn't go away. The first thing I asked for after the birth was pain meds.

I felt like people were annoyed with me for not being more excited about the baby and wanting to go see him, or talk about breast feeding or whatnot, but as I told them, all I wanted was for the pain to stop. I asked repeatedly for drugs, and the doctor assured me that I could have whatever I wanted, but as with most things about the process, it was slow: it took about a half hour or more after telling me I could have whatever drugs I wanted for them to actually order them, and of course, longer to actually get them to me.

Even once I was on Vicodin and Motrin the pain was still there.=20 And then everyone just left me! The room, which had been filled with teams of medical people to take care of the baby plus the doctor, nurse, and Patri was totally deserted, equipment and all. Patri had been unsure whether to go with me or the baby, but the doctor encouraged him to go see the baby, and despite wanting him to stay with me, I decided that I agreed with the doc that the baby needed him more than I did and he should go.

Patri came back after not too long, but people wanted to talk with him, and I was getting irritated, so I finally sent him back to see the baby with other talking people in tow. The only person who stayed was Dawn. She was amazingly awesome, just stayed there with me and held my hand and smiled.

Eventually Patri and others came back and took me to see the baby.=20 I managed to pull together and smile at the baby, but it was still hard to keep my mind on him.

By the time I was finally getting wheeled over to my room, the pain had gotten bad enough that I was crying out again. I mentioned a few times to nurses that I was concerned about the amount of blood that I was losing, but they assured me that post birth bleeding was normal. =20 I still felt like everyone thought I was being a baby, and that the doula was annoyed with me for asking her to stop talking over me to Patri about breast pumping, so after actually passing out I was feeling rather happy and vindicated. In fact, once they got me lying back down afterward, as I told them, it was the best I'd felt all day ;)

The bleeding itself consisted roughly of "peeing blood." That's the best I can describe it, about the same amount and speed as vacating a reasonably full bladder when I would sit up or try to urinate, and a pretty steady stream most of the rest of the time. I was wearing very thick post delivery pads after the birth, and I completely soaked several of them, leaving me sitting in a new puddle of blood as soon as the nurse would take away the old one.

The part that most bothered my friends and myself was how long it took for things to happen after my passing out on the toilet. Not sure what time that was, maybe around 12 or so, as I gave birth at about 10:30, but I think it was at least around 4am by the time the problem was fixed. And in the mean time, I just layed there, feeling the blood drain out, and watching the dots on the ceiling become more and more fuzzy.

Every few minutes nurses would come by, ask the same questions, take my blood pressure, and push on my belly (the same way the doctor did that hurt) to see if I was still having "unusual" bleeding, which they decided I was every time. The pushing on my belly made more blood gush out, so after about the tenth time of them doing this we started getting pretty upset. But arguing was futile though we tried, and we just kept watching the blood pressure results, wondering each time if this time I'd lost enough blood that it wasn't going to be stable anymore. I'm very proud of my blood pressure ;) It was also another of the painfully slow processes we were getting so used to.=20 They had to check and watch to see that I was actually continuing to bleed to much for an hour, then call the doctor, who they couldn't get ahold of for longer, then we could hear them talking in the hall for another half hour or so about the intervention he suggested before actually giving it to me, etc.

Plus the interventions up to the last were things we didn't think would work anyway, which was the case. Since I'd been given pictocin right away, and they kept reconfirming that my unterus seemed to have fine tone, it really didn't seem like the problem was my not closing up, even though that's what they kept giving me stuff for.

Anyway, eventually the resident doctor came and "scrapped me out."=20 They gave me some strong pain killers, then she put on gloves, reached all the way inside, and spent a good fifteen minutes or so scrubbing at my insides as hard as she could. Patri says that she emptied out a full bucket of clots, but I couldn't see. Despite the drugs the process was still a bit painful, but when she offered to stop and give me more pain killers I assured her that no, I really just wanted her to continue, and even when she said she was done I asked if she was sure she'd gotten all of it and let her know that if there was any doubt she should go ahead and scrape more ;)

I also should note that I had much fun with sarcasm during this whole process. During the prolonged bleeding they gave me quite a lot of pain killer, and plus, I'd just been through so much pain that nothing seemed like a big deal anyway. So I amused myself by doing things like telling the nurse that it tickled when she drew blood, and being generally very agreeable: "you want to draw more blood? Sure!=20 From the same spot? Sure! You want to push more on my belly and make me bleed more? Great!" ;)

Anyway, so yeah, it was interesting ;) And more importantly, I seem to be fine now ;) The nurse the next morning informed me that my latest blood tests showed me an anemic, but other than that and a bit longer recovery time than I otherwise would have had, I don't seem to be much worse for the wear.

The part about feeling that Dawn and Patri saved my life is that they didn't leave me. Despite that the baby was much more exciting and we were all tired and wanting to rest, they knew I wasn't feeling the greatest and stayed by my side even after the doctors had left.=20 If someone hadn't been there I probably would have been in much worse shape. I also felt like they helped speed the process up as much as possible, and in general it was just really nice to have someone there holding my hand the whole time. As my mom said with her experience, if my grandmother hadn't been in the room with her when she fainted she probably would have bled to death. I actually don't think my case was quite as severe, but her words stuck with me, and that's how I felt about it.

Anyway, that was a really long ramble and I am now behind on my pumping schedule ;) I'll try to write about the other things that happened soon, and I should note that I'm feeling *a lot* better and generally more positive now. I'm really greatful that to be up and healthy, for having such an awesome husband who is also coping really well, and that our son seems to be a trouper so far and faring as well as we could hope given his less than ideal entrance into the world.