My Eleventh Pregnancy Journey Part 2 – Physical Loss

Hello! My last post centered around the news of miscarriage of my baby. This next part of my journey will include more detail as to what happened after I received the news. I am including images, some of which are graphic in nature. The story itself will be graphic as well in detail. My goal is to not only share my story, but to share how valuable each life is in whichever stage it is in, beginning at conception.

Part 1 ended with my husband and receiving the news that we must now share with our children – the loss of our baby.

Upon our arrival home, I needed a bathroom break. I had been holding it since the ER. As I sat on the toilet, I felt a clump slide out of me and land in the toilet water. At this point, there still was no blood, but I began to feel slight cramping. I cleaned myself and when I looked into the toilet, I called for my husband. He came quickly into the bathroom. What we saw was heartbreaking, yet amazing. From the toilet bowl, my husband gently picked up our baby, born at 12 weeks gestation…..28 weeks to soon. As he rinsed the toilet water off the baby, I went to my bed and cried. He brought me our baby and gently laid this beautiful miracle in the palm of my hand. He wrapped his arms around me and we cried together for this little human we would never get to hold, to snuggle, to know. Although, we were both angry the night before when we received the news of a miscarriage, we felt blessed that we were able to bring closure for the loss of our baby. We knew we would be able, along with our priest, to provide Last Rites for this small human that God so graciously let us have for even this briefest amount of time.

We held our baby gently. I rubbed my cheek against the little body. We looked him over and we found out he was a boy. We decided we wanted to share this most precious moment with our children, but decided only our 17 y/o twins at this time of the morning. It’s 1:00 a.m. and we didn’t want to disturb our younger girls just yet. I didn’t want them to know until after school. My husband roused our twin boys and brought them to our room. We told them what had happened and asked them if they wanted to see their baby brother. They both said yes and we shared the moment with them. They were saddened by what had happened. One cried while the other did not. They had a friend over who wanted to be involved as well. He’s like a part of our family so my husband and I did not hesitate to include him. We said prayers for the baby and for our on sadness. Our boys went back to bed. My husband prepared a small box for him to lie in, wrapped in a washcloth until we found something more suitable. We laid him gently inside the box, put the box on the nightstand beside me, and we snuggled into sleep as well forever grateful that we saw something so tiny, so beautiful, so….wow.

Our baby entered this world at 12 weeks and 4 days. It is now the wee hours of March 14. I awoke from my sleep with stronger cramping in my stomach and I felt a gush of fluid from my vagina. I quickly jumped from bed and made my way to the toilet, blood dripping as I stumbled out of my bedroom door. When I sat on the toilet, blood just poured out of me. This is the first sign of blood since this all began the day before. Finally, when the blood became just dripping, I cleaned myself in the shower and wrapped a towel around my midsection in the fashion of a diaper. Stupidly, I hadn’t bought any pads yet and I wasn’t prepared for this part of it. Unfortunately, I discovered that only blood had come at this point. No placenta. No tissue of any kind. Just blood.

I felt comfortable enough wrapped in the towel to lie back down. The cramping was stronger now and it felt better to curl up on my bed rather than just sit and wait. Before long, I felt another gush of fluid and stumbled back into the bathroom. This time, more blood and some tissue came out. I assumed it was at least some of the placenta, if not all. I got the bleeding under control, wrapped (diaper-style) into a clean towel and went to curl back up on my bed. By this time, the cramping had gotten much worse, but I could still bare it. It didn’t seem long before I heard the music of my alarm. My husband was kind enough to get the kids up and ready and off to school. He let me rest, sleep was not happening, but rest I could and did.

At around 11:00 a.m. I woke up and needed to go potty. I felt the same rush of fluid as I had felt earlier, so I quickly got to the bathroom. And as happened previously, more blood gushed out of me. I still didn’t think too much about it…actually thinking it was normal for this to happen after a miscarriage. The cramping had subsided, and I didn’t feel any pain. I had been expecting the blood, though. As I had done previously, I waited until the blood became a drip and then I cleaned myself up.

Just as I was done, my mom called to let me know she was in town. I explained everything to her. Within about 10 minutes, she was at my door with a friend of hers. The bleeding was only a drip at the moment, so I visited with them for a little while. I was still sitting on my bed as it was the most comfortable for me, so they joined me in my room. As we visited, I began to notice I was feeling weak. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to alarm anyone and I didn’t want to over-react. I told myself I was fine.

And then I felt another gush of fluid coming. I slid out of my bed, my midsection swaddled like a diaper, jokingly told them not to laugh at me and proceeded to the bathroom. As I sat on the toilet, the fluid gushed until it was just a drip. I stood up, swooned and felt very light-headed. I looked into the toilet to see lots and lots of blood. No tissue. Slight clotting, but lots of blood. I leaned against the wall until the dizziness passed, I felt cold chills, and then hot flashes. I just stood there against the wall until I felt steady enough to move. I washed myself up and went back to my bed. I still didn’t want to cause a ruckus so, again, I didn’t say anything. I explained what was happening as nonchalantly as I could so nobody would get worried.

It was now after 4:00 pm and my girlies were home from school. We continued to visit with my mom and her friend. After a couple more hours, my girlies decided to go play and my mom said they needed to get home. They had an hour drive ahead of them still. At this time, I gave them a hug and felt the fluid coming so I rushed into the bathroom. After that gush of blood, the dizziness hit again. I felt cold and then I felt hot. I needed to clean myself up because there was so much blood this time, so I sat in the bathtub with the water running. My blood pressure bottomed out and I barely had strength to move. I hollered for my daughter. When she came to the bathroom door, I told her to call my mom and tell her she needed to come back. Right as all of this was happening, I received a call from my husband telling me he was in the ER with one of our twin boys because some guy had attacked our child. He let me know that our son had a cut on his forehead and a swollen lip. The cut on his forehead was accompanied by blood which led to my husband taking him to the ER to get checked out. By this time, it’s close to 7:00 p.m.

My mom came back to take me to the ER. I almost passed out on my way to the car and again once we arrived at the hospital. Upon my arrival, they put me in a room in the ER, took my vitals, got me into Ultrasound. My hemoglobin was 8.7, but typically ranges between 12 to 16 g/dL so the doctors were concerned with mine. Typical transfusion level is between 7 to 8 g/dL. After the Ultrasound, the doctor told me there was some tissue stuck in the opening of my cervix, so surgery was needed to remove the tissue. I was prepped for surgery and away I went. I am always nervous in hospitals and was quite dismayed when my husband couldn’t be in the OR with me. I was something to knock me out for the surgery. When I awoke, I was put into a recovery room. I had to stay overnight in the hospital and my hubby did not leave my side.

The next afternoon, I was released to go home and I was relieved. I don’t care for hospital stays, but I know that if I hadn’t gone in when I did, I would have died that evening. I needed to regain my strength because losing that much blood takes everything a person has. Just getting up to go the bathroom was a chore…..huffing and puffing the whole time. On top of my physical concerns, I was looking forward to seeing my children. When I had left the night before, I knew they were worried. I remember just wanting to get out of the house before I fainted or anything such thing. I didn’t want them to be scared.

It’s been almost two months since this ordeal. Although, my body has physically healed, my heart still gets heavy from what we lost. I have to tell myself that our baby is in a much better place now…….multiple times a day. It’s not something I (we) will easily or even ever forget. In that short time, we loved our baby and we certainly feel blessed to have had even that very short amount of time. Stay tuned for the next portion of our journey in My Eleventh Pregnancy Journey Part 3 – Emotions.

Thank you for reading about our journey.