Ruby's Birth Story

Ruby's birthday is tomorrow and what a perfect opportunity to share her birth story. Let me get right down to it and bring out my drama queen: I almost died.
It started out relatively normal. I was laying on the couch watching tv when my water broke. I called my doctor's office and let them know and before we headed off to the hospital I had Jim run out and get some food. Having done this before I knew that if I didn't eat now it could be a long time before my next meal.
When we got to the hospital the nurse did an examination to check for amniotic fluid. When the ph strip didn't turn the right color they told me that my water had not broke and that I could go home. I refused to accept that. With all three of my previous babies the first thing to happen was the water breaking. I knew that my water had broke and I was not going to be told otherwise. They finally did a sonogram to measure the amniotic fluid. Yeah like I told them, my water had broke.
By the time I got settled in my room it was later in the evening. The nurse told me they could go ahead and give me petocin and we could have this baby tonight. I asked if my doctor would be here and I was told that it was the nurse midwife who was on call from my doctor's practice. Knowing the complications of my previous births I told the nurse I would feel more comfortable waiting for Dr. Reynolds to be here. Later on I would realize this was of the best decisions I ever made.
The next morning the petocin was started and soon after that the contractions came on fast and furious. Before too long I was ready for the epidural and the anesthesiologist came in to stick me in the spine. I had an epidural with all three of my previous births and they were great. This time it didn't work. They tried and tried over and over again but they weren't getting it in the right spot. I was not happy, I didn't want natural childbirth! After a couple of hours of petocin strength contractions the assholes finally got it right, just in time for me to start pushing. This part went pretty easy and after a few pushes our little girl was born.
This is when things started going downhill and my memory is spotty. While the nurses were weighing Ruby and cleaning her up Dr. Reynolds was working on getting the placenta out. It was not coming out very easily and I was bleeding a lot. At some point the bleeding became excessive. The nurses handed the baby to Jim and there were a lot of people in the room. Dr. Reynolds was still working on the placenta and at this point I had lost so much blood I was going in and out of consciousness. Jim said it was like mass chaos had erupted and he felt helpless just watching. Dr. Reynolds called out for a blood transfusion and shortly after that I was wheeled away for an emergency hysterectomy. Jim said there was blood everywhere and a trail of blood coming off the bed as I was wheeled away. Even though I was mostly out of it I was still aware enough to know that things were not good. I told Dr. Reynolds to not let me die.
After the surgery I was taken to the recovery room. Jim came down to see me for a few minutes, it was so good to see his face and to see the person who went through this with me. We were both in a "What the hell just happened?" state. I sent him back upstairs to be with our baby. The hour I spent in recovery was on of the longest of my life. I couldn't wait to get back up to my room and to hold my new baby and be with my family.

All in all I lost 3 liters of blood (yep, that's more than half). I was also left with a nasty scar on my stomach. Since the surgery was an emergency there was no time to make a neat and pretty incision. I have a big scar that starts right under my belly button down about 5 inches. I've gotten used to it though, I consider it a life tattoo. A reminder of the difficult day my beautiful baby girl came into my world. Happy Birthday to my Ruby.












Our first picture together.
(I had a really good excuse for looking this bad.)