The Fright of my Life (Part Two)

Michael and I waited in the ER for just a few minutes while two nurses brought a bed to the room, but of course it felt like longer.  When it was all set up and ready for me, I was instructed to change into a gown and we were given a TV remote-like device to call in case we needed help.  As soon as I got up out of the wheelchair, I felt liquid leaking out of me and when I got my pants and undies off, there were trickles of blood running down my legs and onto the floor.  I told Michael I thought I needed something else--a pad or something--or I was going to get blood all over the sheets on the bed.  He called our nurse for help.  While we waited, I stood and leaned against him, my face against the warm blanket he was holding.  I cried and said how I couldn't believe this was happening, and that I just wanted my baby to be okay.  Michael was beyond awesome.  He held me and soothed me and was the strong one.  I didn't realize until later how very upset and worried he was too.
When the nurse came back, she brought me one of those huge super-long maxi pads that all hospitals seem to stock, along with some "underwear" that seemed made out of mesh.  But they were dry and that was the important thing.  I got everything on and onto the bed/table.  I started crying again and I think this was when Michael took my face in both hands, looked into my eyes and said, "It's going to be okay.  And if it's not okay, there isn't anything you can do about it."  Strangely, I felt calmed by his words.  Maybe I needed that reminder that what was happening was out of my hands.

After several minutes' wait, the doctor arrived, along with a nurse-practitioner.  I explained again what had happened and what I was experiencing.  I told him that it seemed like the blood was mixed with a lot of sweet-smelling fluid . . . I was worried that my "water" had broken since there was so much of it.  He said they would check the baby via ultrasound and he would call my OBGYN's office to see if there was anything else they should do. 

Before he did the ultrasound, he felt my back and asked if I was having pain.  I said yes, some and he asked if it was in the center or more on the sides.  I guessed the sides.  Then he poked my stomach a bit which didn't hurt but was tender.  Michael and I both thought it was odd that he listened to my abdomen with a stethoscope.  I don't know if he was listening for bowel sounds, or if he was really trying to hear the baby's heartbeat, but I was thinking that it was probably way too early for the latter. 

Then it was time for an ultrasound with a little portable machine that they'd wheeled in.  I'm nervous about getting ultrasounds anyway (especially early in the pregnancy when so much development is occuring), but I needed to know where the blood/fluid was coming from and I needed to make sure the baby was okay.

I didn't try to look at the screen.  I kind of covered my eyes with one hand and waited to hear the news.  Right away the doctor said, "If you look here, you'll see the heart beating."  I turned my head to see, and he moved the screen toward me.  Sure enough, there was a little form and I could see movement.  To my right, I heard Michael choking out four or five heavy, broken sobs.  It was then I knew just how worried he had been and how much he cared about our baby.

The doctor then tried to figure out the baby's heartbeats per minute, but he didn't really know how to use the machine.  I got a little nervous while he fumbled around with dials and explained that the hospital had recently changed machines.  Now I wish I would have asked for someone how knew how to use it to finish the exam, but at the time I didn't want to cause any problems.  My comfort is that I'm pretty sure the machine was fairly low-powered, so hopefully no harm was done.

He did finally get a reading on the beats per minute, saying that it was normal.  I think it was around 145.  Then he left to call my doctor's office and see if there was anything else to be done.

Michael and I felt (of course!) a tremendous sense of relief at seeing that our baby was okay.  That lasted until the doctor came back and said that there really wasn't anything left to be done but wait and see and that things could go "either way."  I was thinking, "Are you serious?!"  Those firefighters had told me that everything would be okay and now you're saying it's touch and go?  The doctor went on to say that the on-call OBGYN at Dr. Stempel's office had said the only things to do were to check the viability of the baby and make sure my blood wasn't RH negative, which it isn't.  Apparently, doing a vaginal exam wouldn't tell them much and might cause more harm than good.

Needless to say, we were not very comforted when we left.  I was terrified of moving or standing up because I was afraid I was still bleeding.  Michael was amazing though--he helped me get dressed (back in the soaked pants) and put on my socks and shoes, then wheeled me out of the room.  I really had to pee so we stopped at a bathroom on our way out of the ER.  It was as I had feared: the super maxi pad was already soaked with red blood.  This freaked me out beyond belief because it looked for all the world like my period on my heaviest day.  But there wasn't anything I could do, so I just got back in the wheelchair and waited while Michael finished filling out paperwork that had been skipped when we'd arrived.  I did think to ask our nurse for a Chux pad to put underneath me on the drive home, as I didn't want to get blood on Michael's truck seats.

The drive home was pretty quiet.  We stopped at Fred Meyer for something to eat as it was by that time (10PM) about the only place still open with semi-healthy food.  I waited in the truck while Michael got some string cheese and tortilla soup for me. 

When we got home I just ate a little bit and went to bed.  Michael heated up my soup, brought me grapes and cheese and whatever else I needed.  When I told him that I thought I'd sleep on the couch because I didn't want to try walking up the stairs, he said okay and went up to our room.  He came back with all of the blankets from our bed in his arms.  I asked, "Didn't you leave yourself any blankets?"  He replied that he was going to sleep downstairs with me, on the other couch.  So, so sweet.  He'd also brought me the little flannel heart that my friend Carrie made while we were doing IVF.  That one gesture was so touching . . . how had he known the exact right thing to do at that moment?

I lay awake for a long, long time that night, thinking about the accident and the baby and trying not to think about the bleeding.  I'd changed pads when we got home and had had to change again a couple hours later--that made two of the big maxi pads that I'd gone through.  The hospital had said to call my OB's office if I went through more than one pad an hour for four hours or more than 10 in 24 hours.  I was worried the bleeding wouldn't slow down.  I put the third pad on sometime in the middle of the night and by the morning there was just a spot about the size of a quarter on it, so that was definitely encouraging.

That night I spent a lot of time staring out the living room window at the night sky, talking to God and bargaining for my baby.  What would it take for me to get to keep this baby?  I was willing to do anything.  I talked to the baby too.  "We love you so much," I said, "and we want you to stay with us, but whatever happens, we will still love you.  We are so proud of you for doing such a good job growing."  I felt better after I talked to the baby--like again, it was out of my hands.  It felt like I'd been awake for most of the night, when I finally felt a heavy sense of peace descend upon me and at last I was asleep.

Tuesday morning I called Dr. Stempel's office just after 8AM and explained what had happened.  They got me an appointment to see him at 12:45 that day.  Then it was just a long wait before we would need to leave for the north Portland office.  I distracted myself with t.v. and Michael continued to take excellent care of me, bringing me juice, making me oatmeal for breakfast, making me lunch before we left.  I kept thanking him, but there was no way to express just how thankful I was / am for him.  All of those little things he did during that horrible time when we didn't know what would happen added up to mean so, so much to me.  I'll probably never be able to tell him exactly how much it meant.

Finally it was time to go to the appointment.  All we had was the truck which isn't the easiest for me to get into on a good day.  To make it easier for me, Michael brought over some blocks of wood for me to stand on so I wouldn't have to jump onto the seat--again, so sweet. 

When we got to the doctor's office, they took us back after waiting only a few minutes.  We were to have the ultrasound first and then meet with the doctor.  I was terrified of what we would find out after all that blood loss.  The technician knew what was going on and was very kind.  When she put the transducer on my belly and the image of the baby popped up on the screen, I asked right away, "Is it moving?"  She replied that it was and I started breathing again.  Michael and I watched as our baby waved little arms around, wiggled and stretched.  I was in awe of the tiny vertebrae of the spine that looked so much like little pearls.  What a surreal experience--to watch movement on a screen from a miniature human being and to know that it is inside you.  It didn't feel real to me, although I think that will change once I start feeling the baby move.  At the time it was beautiful and a miracle and yet hard for me to believe was real.

The technician measured the baby's head and femur, checked his heart rate (excellent) and said that everything looked fine.  The amniotic sac was intact and the placenta was not pulled away from the uterine lining.  We could see the other little twin too and she said it was all there--its sac was still intact as well although it had slipped down and was now quite close to my cervix.  She said that could have been the reason for all the bleeding. 

The funny thing is that I had mentioned that when we were at the hospital--first to the nurse who triaged me and took my vital signs, and again to the doctor.  I had thought (hoped) that the blood and fluid was from the twin who hadn't made it.  I had never had any bleeding or anything (Dr. Stempel had said I might or I might not) and it just made sense to me that maybe the accident had jarred loose the one that was no longer growing.

The technician managed to get a couple of great pictures of little Baby Hoffman for us.  She printed them out for us and I'll post them below so you can see . . .

Hi Mama and Papa!  See, I'm okay!

Oh my goodness!  Just look at that round tummy!

I asked if she might be able to tell us whether it was a boy or a girl . . . being 14 weeks, I knew it was sometimes possible to tell the gender if the baby's legs were in the right position.  At first she said, "Don't paint the room yet, but if I had to guess, I'd say this is a boy."  Then she manuevered for some different angles and said, "Oh, this is definitely a boy!"  It was pretty funny.  She showed us his two femurs and said, "See this is a leg bone and this is a leg bone, and this here in the middle is not a leg bone!"  :) 

After the ultrasound we felt much, much, MUCH better about our little one.  We met briefly with Dr. Stempel and he said that he thought the bleeding was probably from the twin who hadn't made it, although he said the fluid was a mystery since both sacs were intact.  He told me that the accident, while scary for me, wasn't a direct blow to the uterus and that the living baby should be just fine.  We already had an appointment to go back on November 8th (16 weeks!), and he said he would see us then.

So now it's been 10 days since the accident.  I've been doing okay but am still spotting which is a bit worrisome, and I've been having that same weird UTI-like feeling I had before when we found out the other twin's heart had stopped.  I've been telling myself that the feeling is just from my body passing old blood and not to worry, that our little boy is okay.  The days that I still have some morningsickness are actually welcome because it reminds me that I'm pregnant and that things are happening as they should.  I did call Dr. Stempel's office today just to let them know I'm still spotting and see if the doctor thought it was normal.  He did, but said I could come in and they would check the baby's heartbeat if I wanted.  I did want to go, but we were so busy at work that there was no way Michael could have gotten away and there was no way I was going by myself just in case it was not good news.  Just hearing that Dr. Stempel thinks it's normal is enough for me to wait until our appointment on Tuesday.

Thank you all so much for your good thoughts and prayers for us.  I'm sorry that I alarmed some of you with my first post . . . I should have probably posted it all at once so you'd have the whole story at one time.  Please continue to pray for us . . . <3

Thank you.