Gianna's (after) Birth Story: 9:55 am-4 pm

Missed the rest? Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.   

However…….there was one small issue of my placenta. It still hadn’t come out. Normally, you feel contractions after the baby is delivered to help push the placenta out. Well. That didn’t happen to me. No contractions. NOTHING. 

Oh goodness. That damned placenta!!!!!      

                                               

I guess technically at this point, the “birth story” is over, but there is definitely more to the story. You see. My placenta wouldn’t come out. I tried squatting again, pushing even though I didn’t feel any contractions, so they gave me a tincture of Angelica under the tongue (GROSS TASTING) which can cause miscarriages (which would really just cause the placenta to come out because I already had a baby). Nothing. I was hemorrhaging too because you have to expel the placenta so that the uterus can clamp down and stop the bleeding, so they gave me anti-bleed tincture. Still hemorrhaging. Still no placenta. I won’t go into detail about how much blood because that’s really icky and blood clots are freaky looking. I decided I just wouldn’t look lol. 

All the while, keep in mind that Chris and I are laying on the bed together holding Gianna and everything is pretty much happy. I’m a little ticked that my placenta won’t cooperate and I can’t just be done with the whole thing (pushing out a baby had a point…waiting on a placenta….seemed annoying and pointless by that time…I just wanted to enjoy my baby and go home and have wine and cheesecake!!!)

My bladder was super super full (nice and hydrated from all that labor-aid Chris made me drink!) and sometimes that keeps the placenta from moving on its merry way. Well. We fixed that issue and still nothing. I continued to lose blood, so they then gave me 20 units of pitocen on my right thigh to hopefully speed things along and encourage uterine contractions. Naaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh. 

At this point, Carmen estimated that I had lost about 500-600 mL of blood from birth until right then, which is not atypical, but not super normal either. She made the decision that what was going on with me and my placenta was beyond their scope of care and that I would need to go to the hospital and most likely have a D&C to scrape that sucker out. Carmen started an IV/fluids in my right hand and Melena, baby, Chris, and I rode in our car, and Carmen drove Melena’s car to Trinity Mother Francis Hospital just ½ mile down the road. 

Carmen had called to let the Labor and Delivery area that we would be coming. Chris was really upset about the whole thing, because we of course did not want to go to the hospital, but I was feeling really calm. I had birth exactly the way I wanted to and it went splendidly. I literally could not have asked for a better first birth and more memorable, happy experience. Unfortunately, one-now-rendered-useless (except for encapsulation ;-)  ) body part wouldn’t cooperate with the plan. Going to the hospital to have them scrape my placenta out was definitely not part of the plan, but hey, I had a baby! That was basically my thought process. 

Once we got to the hospital, everything sloooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeddddddd down. So SLOW. It was like 11 am. Some nurses (really really kind nurses) attended to me and got me situated in the room. The doctor was a pretty nasty guy, but whatever, I didn’t really have a choice. He said he would only allow one person in the room with me. My mom had arrived at this point, so of course she didn’t listen (hehehe) and came in anyways. 

The next few hours are kind of a daze. Another, younger, nicer female doctor (or maybe resident), came in to try to manually detach the placenta from my uterus by a combination of gently pulling on the umbilical cord and trying to scoop it out (but she couldn’t even find the top of it). Yeah. Soooooo fun. But seriously…it wasn’t hard work like giving birth again so I just kind of layed there. I’ve always been a very good patient. I figured, just let them do what they need to do, shut up, and you’ll get out sooner rather than later and get to lay in your nice comfy bed with a nice squishy baby. 

When that doctor couldn’t get to the placenta, the mean male doctor came back in like…30 min-1 hr later and did the same thing, but much more ummm forcefully, let’s say. I think I began to win him over at this point. He was incredulous that I was able to tolerate so much prodding and digging around up there after giving birth. I think I told him that he was just doing his job or something. (I think he also realized that my retained placenta was like no joke super attached and he couldn’t figure out why so was maybe a little humbled? Maybe my imagination…I had lost a lot of blood…) He started to soften up a bit and then said that he couldn’t put me through much more of this without anesthesia and wanted to take me to the operating room. He thought he still might be able to manually remove my placenta, but also said he may have to do a D&C and use tools to scrape it out (which is scary because the tools can puncture the uterus or other nasty, nasty things). 

So all the while, Chris (with the flu) and my mom are in the room taking turns holding the baby. They’re both seriously freaking out, but in different ways. Chris was really thrown into fatherhood in a brutal kind of way, but I swear for the first week after that, Gianna preferred Chris over me, so that’s kind of cool. (Obviously now, I’m the one with food/human pacifier so I win over everyone LOL).

They took me to the operating room and gave me a spinal (btw…I HATE being numb. That was the worst part of the whole thing!). I was STARVING at this point and had lost a ton of blood, so I passed out. Nappy time for Rachel. Really though, that was fine, because I was pretty much exhausted and done with the poked and prodded business. 

When I woke up, the doctor said he was able to detach my placenta manually, no tools needed! Woo hoo! I was done! 

BUT STILL COULDN’T EAT.

I finally made it into a “recovery room” around 4 pm and after like an hour they said I could start with liquids, so I had 2 enormous things of cranberry juice. The kind that claims to be 100% juice, but it’s all from concentrate and is really predominantly apple and grape juice with a hint of cranberry? Yeah that kind. Super sugary and glorious, with that lovely hospital ice (like Sonic but a little softer). 

The doctor said that I would have to stay in the hospital overnight so they could check my blood/hemoglobin/iron levels in the morning and make sure I didn’t hemorrhage anymore. Obviously the story goes a little longer, but I can sum it up. Overnight in a hospital=no fun. No more bleeding. Finally took my stupid IV out. Levels were fine. Discharged in the morning. OH PS. I didn’t get to keep my placenta (boo) because they needed to do some “testing” on it in pathology. My poor little lab-rat placenta!

So yeah, after the “I gave birth” high, that first day/night was pretty rough. Trying to hold and nurse a baby with an IV in my right hand, being checked on every 2 hours…those were exactly the reasons I didn’t want to give birth in a hospital. However, I obviously concede that while I didn’t need to give birth in a hospital, I definitely needed the medical establishment to finish what my own body wouldn’t. 

Speaking of my own body, we learned something at the hospital. My retained placenta wasn’t like a random freak thing. Turns out, I have what’s called a bicornuate uterus (heart shaped). Basically, my uterus isn’t normal. Gianna’s butt was stuck in the right lobe of the heart (which was lucky, because heart shapes have much higher incidence of breech positioning and there’s really no way to reposition because they’re literally stuck up there) and my placenta was in the left lobe. So, rather than push the placenta out with uterine contractions, my uterus kind of wrapped around it, and it couldn’t contact properly (at all). 

A Bicornuate uterus is pretty uncommon, only .1-.5% of the population have it. My mom has one, too, but she didn’t even find out until Breana was born…12 years after I was. So I DO feel VERY lucky to have found out with my first birth. Knowledge is power, for sure. 

Now, after reading about bicornuate uteruses, I realize how truly blessed I was during this pregnancy. It was pretty much a breeze, perfect delivery, with just that placenta nastiness at the end. It turns out that having a bicornuate uterus means a HUGE increased chance of 1^st trimester miscarriage (I’ve read between 30-60% of pregnancies, depending on the source), increase in premature delivery (15-25%), great difficulty achieving pregnancy, 20% higher risk of breech positioning, high risk of cervical incompetence, fetal growth retardation, and last but not least, retained placenta, which I of course DID experience. 

I now know that in future pregnancies, I will need to insist that the sonographer find out where the placenta is located. If it’s in a different location, like the side, back or front of the uterus, everything should go normally after the birth. If it’s in the same spot (one of the lobes), it’s very possible that the same thing will happen again. In that case, I will plan to continue using a midwife for delivery at the birth center or at home, but have an OB-GYN that I see towards the end of my pregnancy to have on back up, should I need to be transferred to the hospital again for a D&C or manual extraction of the placenta, and so I don’t end up with Dr. GrumpyPants again. 

Pretty crazy stuff, huh? So, I have a freak uterus and who knows if I’ll be blessed with uncomplicated pregnancies like I was this time. Who knows if I’ll miscarry, or deliver early, or have a breech presentation that needs a C-section. I’m not special in that way though. No one knows, whether they have a silly heart uterus or not. Now and in the future, I know God will guide us in the timing and size of our family and outcome of each pregnancy.

In these past 2 months since Gianna was born, even though my mind does wander to what will happen in the future with those annoying statistics looming over my head, I am completely and utterly joyful and thankful for my perfect little family. 

Up next? Chris's version of the birth story!