Rough Day - 30 Weeks, 3 Days

Today has been a rough day. I'm going to keep this pretty short because I'm exhausted, but I'll try to cover the bases. This morning, Amaraa wasn't feeling well. She was swollen and achy from the blood transfusion yesterday. The doctor ordered some medicine to help the swelling go down. As soon as they started giving her the medicine, she felt a pop in her lower abdomen and felt a gush of blood (at least she thought it was blood). When she went to the bathroom and checked, it wasn't blood, but clear fluid. The neonatologist scheduled an ultrasound for later on in the day. A little bit later on, Amaraa had a large gush of blood. The nurse called the doctor and he said they needed to prep her for an emergency c-section.

The anesthesiologist and the nurse quickly got her ready and we went down to the operating room. During the c-section, Amaraa said that she felt weird and she started having trouble breathing. She passed out and they had to intubate her. They took me in to see the baby and watch what they were doing with him. It was hard because I was so worried about Amaraa, but it was so good to get to see the baby. After they cleaned the baby up and gave him some medicine to help the little sacks in his lungs stay open, they wheeled his little warming unit into the Newborn Intensive Care Unit. I followed and watched them as they worked on him. He weighed 3 lbs. and was 15 inches long. They put him on a ventilator and put some IVs into his little body. His vitals looked good and the neonatologist sent me back to Amaraa's room to wait for her to come back from surgery. I was so nervous for Amaraa that it was hard to enjoy the time with the baby. Luckily, one of the nurses came in and told me that she was OK and that she would be back to the room shortly.

I talked to the doctor and he told me Amaraa had lost more blood than they had hoped in the c-section. When you lose as much blood as she has lost over the past couple of days, you deplete the clotting agents in your blood. The plan was to watch her carefully and make sure she was clotting OK. When Amaraa finally came in, she was really groggy. They had to give her general anesthesia while she was intubated, so it took her a while to wake up enough to communicate. She was bleeding a lot and they gave her 4 more units of blood (remember, she had 4 units yesterday and the average adult only has 9 or 10 units of blood in their body). She didn't seem to be clotting very well, so after watching her for a while, they decided to take her down to the ICU.

When we got to the ICU, the ICU doctor explained that they were going to try everything they could to stop the bleeding, but if it didn't work, they might have to do a hysterectomy. They worked on her for about an hour and couldn't get on top of the bleeding, so the doctor said they would have to do a hysterectomy to "win". They had been giving her so much IV fluid, blood cells, and other blood products that some of that fluid was getting into her lungs and making it hard for her to breathe. Her abdomen was also filling with blood at the same time, which put a lot of upward pressure on her lungs. They put her on a CPAP machine to help her breathe, which helped her oxygen levels, but because of the fluid in her lungs, she felt like she was suffocating. I couldn't do anything but hold her hand and encourage her to keep taking deep breaths. It was so hard to watch her suffer like that.

They finally got everything ready and wheeled her down to the operating room. I waited with my parents in the waiting room. I was completely spent with all that had happened. I was so worried that I couldn't eat, and my stomach was in knots. To distract ourselves, we went upstairs to get the stuff out of Amaraa's room. Shortly after we got back to the waiting room, the nurse manager came in and told us that Amaraa had finally stabilized. They were finally getting her blood count back up to around a 23, but that she had been down around a 16 (that's after the 4 units of blood they gave her today. She was down around 10 before the blood). The surgery finished about an hour and a half later and the doctor came in and talked to us. He said that once they removed the uterus, they were able to get the bleeding stopped fairly quickly. He said that her lungs were still full of fluid and that she was intubated, so she would have to remain unconscious until they are able to get her breathing on her own. They took her back up to the ICU where she will stay for a couple of days.

Before we left the hospital tonight, we stopped by the NICU to see how the baby was doing. He was doing well and the nurse said he is right on target for where they expect him to be at this point. I feel so humbled by everyone's support, love and prayers. We were praying for 30 weeks and we made it to 30 weeks and three days. Even though today was really rough for both of us, we feel so blessed to have made it so far and that everything went as well as it did today.