Ttc As A Genetic Carrier

I have zero time to update this. So if you want other ways to keep up with L’s life let me know.

*My postpartum story is a very rare thing. I don’t want to scare anyone who is currently pregnant or wants to have a baby in the future. This is just my experience.*

You know what, I need to get my postpartum story out because it was the worst part of 2017 for me. That’s a lot to say when you also get news that your child has CF the same year, but I knew I had time to prepare for that. My postpartum experience was horrible. It’s the reason we won’t even discuss having another child. If we have another child they will be adopted/fostered, but we will probably just stick with our beautiful boy.

Ok, down to what I really need to say. This is my story, I’ll write Landon’s below. I’m going to keep this as concise as possible because it’s still hard for me to think about and I’d rather not dwell on it. Everything seemed normal until Sunday afternoon (L was born late Thursday night). We had already gotten our discharge paperwork, signed it, we were just hanging around to do Landon’s last feeding of the day (in the NICU) before we (just toby and I) went home. Toby had run out to get some food. When he came back I was in the bathroom and I just didn’t quite feel right. Now, if you’ve ever had a baby you know all your privacy has gone way out the window. Everyone has seen everything. Soon after I felt something odd and I started bleeding and told him to get the nurse. As soon as he came back in I told him I was going to pass out. There was a nurse that came in and was there with us when I passed out. When I came to there were about a dozen nurses in the room and they had put smelling salts under my nose. I had apparently passed a horribly large clot and hit my head when I passed out. Luckily the bleeding quit on its own, but my blood counts were way down from where they started. After a fun trip for a CT scan to make sure my brain was okay, they restarted my IV so I could get some blood transfusions. I got 2 units, the next day they sent me on my way expecting it not to happen again.

But it did. Two more times at home (7 days postpartum) I passed a large clot (not nearly as large as the first), bled, and one time I didn’t pass out, the second I did. Both times I had Toby call 911 because I didn’t know if the bleeding would stop. The first time I was pretty much dismissed from the ER with no answers. I didn’t have any active bleeding that they could tell. I was told to go to my normal doctors appointment and get my staples out. I had to see a PA that day and she said my bleeding was heavier than normal, but not concerning. I wanted to cry right then and there, but I didn’t advocate for myself. Within an hour of that appointment I bled out again (and blacked out) at home. This time the OB on call admitted me. Eventually I got 4 units of blood and they did a D&C to clean my uterus out. During the D&C a medication error occurred. I had vasopressin injected IM into my thigh. Luckily it doesn’t seem to have caused any damage. Those of you that are nurses know how dangerous vasopressin can be, and remember I was induced for preeclampsia. They still don’t have answers on what happened and why I was bleeding.

I have had no complications since.

I keep thinking I’m ready to share my birth story, but then it just seems hard to relive. I feel the need to share strictly because things can go wrong and it’s why I felt the need to be in a hospital and have an OB rather than a midwife (midwives are great! Don’t get me wrong, it just wasn’t for me). This will be long, but I’ll break up my birth story and my postpartum one.

Tuesday, November 7th I found out I was being induced the next night due to preeclampsia they didn’t want getting worse. Toby and I spent the next day running last minute errands and spending time together. I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions for 24 hours before going in.

They hooked me up to monitors and could see all my Braxton Hicks, so we had to postpone starting the induction until we got doctor approval. Eventually the first cytotec was placed and my contractions got worse. I ended up having asystolic contractions (5 contractions back to back and then about a minute break, they were mild but so exhausting) for about 8 hours. I made almost no progress. I went from a fingertip dilated to a 1. One of the other doctors from the practice came in and broke my water, which was a whole other ordeal (very hard to break bag and quite a bit of amniotic fluid). It was meconium stained so we had to have NICU present at birth. Not long after this they started the pitocin and I opted for an epidural. They let me labor for a bit, but I just wasn’t changing. I used the peanut ball and rotated from left to right for hours trying to get my cervix to dilate. I also had an internal monitor placed so they knew just how much pitocin they could give me safely. At 2 pm they came in and I was still not changing and they were giving me another hour before they were just going to do a c section.

At 3 they came back in and I had finally gotten to a 4! After that I moved along nicely. At 6 I had gotten to a 9, but realized my epidural was wearing off and was completely uncomfortable. They rebolused my epidural but I realize now it didn’t help as much as it should have. I labored a while after that and was a 9.5 for a long time. At like 9 ish I was finally complete and miserably uncomfortable. I pushed for over an hour. He was past my pubic bone and everything and I just couldn’t get him any farther. I don’t remember a lot of it, due to being in a lot of pain. I do remember getting sick in the middle of all of it, and Landon getting the hiccups and kicking me harder than he ever had before. The entire time that I had my epidural and internal monitor they had my contractions as strong as is safe and I was feeling it on one side without realizing that it was pain and not just pressure.

At this point I was mentally and physically done. I was going on 36 hours of no sleep and almost as long of no food because I was too nervous to eat before my induction. I was hallucinating from all of that plus the pain and I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t control my body anymore. I told my doctor I was done and didn’t want to try anymore. She had them dose up my epidural again to give me time to figure out if I wanted to keep pushing or if I really wanted her to do a c section. I couldn’t relax since my epidural wasn’t working and I had Toby call her back in within a few minutes. She finally agreed to do a c section. All I remember was screaming down the halls and Dennis Rodgers my anesthesiologist. While they prepped me I could feel pain on one side. They finally realized that the epidural had most likely moved and that it wasn’t going to work for a c section. They gave me ketamine so they could deliver Landon safely. Ketamine is a sedative that causes hallucinations, which was interesting. Toby wasn’t allowed in the room because of it and I thought I was on a Japanese game show.

Landon was delivered safely November 9, 2017 at 10:34 pm. I didn’t wake up from the sedative until 12:30 am. I didn’t get to meet Landon on his birthday. After being delivered Landon decided he was too tired to breathe. It took them about 10 minutes to get him stable. Thankfully Toby got to go with them to the NICU after he was stable. They both came to me when I woke up from surgery. It was amazing to see Landon for the first time with his dad.