Now I'm really REALLY scared!

[ladysarcasma]

Just went for my checkup at 21 weeks. I love the practice I'm with, and the docs are great. I totally trust their judgment. My last practice...not at all.

So finally, I find out the WHOLE story of what happened in my surgery 5 years ago. I knew I'd been near death but: I was in induced labor for over 32 hours. They pushed baby back in. I had an infection from laboring for as long as I had (they didn't tell me that). I went into emergency surgery. Baby was breech and lodged in the pelvis. They extended transverse into an inverted T incision. I bled uncontrollably and had a blood transfusion of 4 units of blood and 4 units of something else (I can't remember what she said). My uterus had problems contracting back because of the incision. I was put out, and woke up in ICU where I stayed on a breathing tube for 2 days. Baby was in NICU with low blood sugar and jaundice.

Before that, I'd had very high weight, very very high blood pressure, and was under extreme amounts of stress. I'd gained about 72 pounds and was very obese.

This doc said all the problems in that situation were caused by the situation and not by any problem I have physically. She said this time my weight is great, my BP is great, my urine tests are perfect, and the placenta is in the back, so it probably won't attach to scar tissue from before. She said this time they will do a planned section with two docs in the room with me, during the day, no emergencies, etc... BUT they'd had a practice-wide meeting, and had decided I must deliver at 37 weeks to avoid absolutely any chance of going into labor. I know that's early, but she said the benefits outweigh the risks.

I'm TERRIFIED now. I kinda knew some of these things about the last time, but I really didn't know how traumatic it really was. I only remember being scared and getting knocked out. Now that I know it all, I'm so scared of something going wrong again. What if there's too much scar tissue? What if I bleed out again? I don't even know how to feel right now, but I'm so afraid I'm not going to make it through this!! And if I don't, my daughter will be raised by my ex husband and my fiance will lose her And then he'll have to raise a baby by himself!

The doc tried to be reassuring, but even she was surprised by the level of trauma in the last delivery, and shocked that I "chose" to do it again (it wasn't planned, so I didn't...but I was happy that it happened anyway).

I want to be happy, but I can't stop crying. How on Earth am I going to get through this?

 

[BlueHadeda]

I might be wrong, but it sounds to me like everything that went wrong, was because baby got stuck due to being breeched. In that case, everything should be prevented this time round with you getting the c-section at 37 weeks.

I can understand why you're scared though, it sounds like a horrific experience. I'm so sorry you had to go through all of that. My one friend also ended up in ICU for a week after her c-section. She too almost died. She didn't even experience labour, it was an elective c-section, but she also bled too much afterwards. I seem to remember (it was 9 years ago) that she had to be taken back into surgery afterwards and then was sent to ICU. She was out of it for days. 5 Years later she had another daughter (2 miscarriages in the meantime), and she had another elective c-section. It went absolutely perfectly. No problem. No complication. No excessive bleeding. She and baby was absolutely fine and went home after 3 nights. The "baby" is now 3 years old already.

Good luck, I hope everything will be fine for you this time. Remember, the drs will be on the lookout for anything that might go wrong, and there's loads of things they can inject during a c-section to help contract a uterus and thicken the blood. I also bled a bit after my last (4th) c-section, and the uterus also didn't want to contract. They had to inject some extra hormones and I got some extra stitches to stop the bleeding. It wasn't a big deal at all fortunately. I only needed iron-transfusion via an IV line afterwards.