Where I've been...

On July 12, 2006, I woke up at 5:30 am when Bertito’s alarm went off. I got up to go to the bathroom, and I felt gushing down my leg. (I sleep in the nude) My first reaction was GREAT, my water broke. When I got to the bathroom, I turned the light on, and instead of seeing water everywhere, there was blood. I looked back to the bed and there was blood starting on the bed and leading over to where I was standing as the blood continued to gush out. The only thing I could say was, “Oh my God!” Bertito immediately jumped up in the bed. “What?” “I’m bleeding all over the place.” I sat on the toilet and peed as I watched myself still bleed while Bertito rushed around the room trying to figure out what to do. The day before, I had just packed a bag for an overnight stay at the hospital, and I was just wondering where it was so I could tell him to get it. Bertito had no idea what to do, he was still frantically rushing around. The weird part, I was in no pain at all. That’s why I was so shocked to see blood instead of water, no cramping, no sharp pains, nothing. I remember Bertito asking, “Should we get clothes for the baby?” as I put on some pajama bottoms and a tank top. I shook my head, “She might be dead! Let’s just go to the hospital.” We did grab the bag, and after absolutely no preparation, we were on our way to Celebration Hospital which is right near Disney. I have never seen Bertito drive so fast in my whole life, he usually drives like a careful old turtle. When we got closer to the hospital, he decided he would take a short cut, and we wound up lost of course for 10 minutes. Finally, we arrived. Bertito jumped out of the car, grabbed a wheelchair and I was on my way in. When I told the front desk what was going on, they immediately rushed me up to OB. After a couple of very uncomfortable exams, a lot of pokes, an IV, and a few hours, they determined I had a placenta abruption. This is when the placenta separates from the wall of the uterus, it was a tear, which is why I was bleeding. The condition usually occurs from something like falling down the steps or being in a car accident, but clearly in my case, nothing like that had happened to me. The doctors said sometimes, this happened for no reason… just the luck of the draw. The result of the abruption was my uterus was starting to go through contractions from being stressed. I was started immediately on Magnesium Sulfate (also known as Mag), among an array of other medications through my IV. Mag is a HORRIBLE drug. It makes you feel like you have an uncontrollable fever, you can’t focus your eyes on anything, you can’t move because your body feels like it weighs 500 pounds, you get nauseous and incredibly tired. And if that wasn’t enough, after two days of being on Mag, I was still having contractions! At the end of the second day, I started to feel like I couldn’t breath. I was suffering from another side effect of being on the Mag, the doctors told me I had developed pneumonia. I was immediately taken off of Mag, and they started to treat my pneumonia. All together, I was in the hospital for 1 week. During most of my stay; I had a catheter, I had to wear leg cuffs to prevent blood clots in my legs, I had 5 different IV sites drilled into my arms, and had so much blood drawn from me that I had no veins left and completely looked like a junkie. My doctor finally let me go home on July 18th, and was to be on bed rest until I delivered the baby. My mom came down from Maryland to care for me, because I was only allowed to get up to go the bathroom and that’s it! On July 25th, I was having a severe cramping feeling. I felt like I had to go to the bathroom, and I was throwing up. I lay down in the babies room and just curled up in a little ball. It was not like contractions, it was just a constant horrible cramping, like period times 10! My moaning and groaning was starting to piss off Bertito, so he insisted that we go to the hospital. When we got to Celebration again, they put me on the monitors and noticed that I was having contractions again. They tried to stop them with 2 other medicines before they put me on the dreaded Mag again. At 3 am on the 26th, I was transferred to Florida Hospital South which is in downtown Orlando. The reason I was sent there was just incase I did have to deliver, they have a NICU. When I got to the next hospital, they looked at my chart and decided to give me a somewhat emergency C section. My mom was so sad to know that only one person was allowed in the OR. My beloved Susan arrived at the hospital just in time for the surgery. When I was wheeled into the OR, it suddenly hit me that I wasn’t going to be pregnant anymore, I was going to be coming out with a daughter! The anesthesiologist gave me a spinal block which paralyzed me from the breasts down. It was definitely the weirdest thing I have ever felt. That for some reason made me really nauseous and they had to give me anti-nausea medicine in my IV to stop me from heaving. Then Bertito was allowed to come in. They put up the sheet between my face and the rest of my body. Bertito stood up the whole time to watch. I’m still jealous that he got to see and I didn’t! I would have loved to see how they did the whole thing. I didn’t feel anything the whole time, just felt my body rocking around a little. At 10:39 am, they held up a bloody little baby for me to see. Kairi Marie. She was so cute! She cried a little, and then they rushed her off to the NICU. What actually hurt was then they stuffed my uterus back in my body. I was then put in a recovery room. After a couple hours, I was taken from there to the NICU to see Kairi. I wasn’t able to hold her, just touch a little on her arms. I couldn’t really see her, she had a bunch of tubes and wires all over her, but I could still tell she was adorable! Stay tuned for Kairi's hospital stay.......