This whole time is an absolute blur to me, and luckily I have Tony who has filled in some of the gaps for me and I have a copy of my hospital notes that I was able to read through. I remember the room being full of people and the midwives stating that something was not right. Before I knew it they were saying they needed to rush me back to theatre, Tony was saying a teary goodbye to me and my brother was unable to come in to see Noah.
I had been hemorrhaging for an hour and half due to my uterus not contracting and had lost approx 2.5 litres there and then on the bed in front of Tony. I was losing a constant amount of blood at a fast rate all the way back to the theatre. My mum just saw the bed whizz past her and as much as she tried to chase it, she couldn't catch them. She had no idea what had happened or where they were taking me.
I remember as soon as I got into theatre the anaesthetist said they were going to put me to sleep and that the on-call obstetrician consultant had arrived. I know that they tried absolutely everything they could to stop the bleeding. They firstly tried manually massaging my uterus, but this didn't work. By this point I had lost a lot of blood and they were pumping it back into me as quick as it was coming out. They then decided they needed to use a bakri balloon, which was inserted into my uterus and sutured to try and control the bleeding. I was put into intensive care with the plan being that I would stay there until my body had recovered but an hour later they came to check on me and realised I was bleeding through again.
Another consultant had arrived at the hospital by that point so that they had 2 pairs of eye's to make sure they weren't missing anything. I was returned to theatre, where they removed the balloon and my uterus was still completely floppy. I was still hemorrhaging at this point and they knew it was time they needed to speak to Tony and my family. They said that they couldn't stop the bleeding as they couldn't get my uterus to contract. The only way they could hopefully finally stop the bleeding was to remove what was bleeding, by performing a hysterectomy.
This put Tony in the most awful position anyone should be in. Not only has he thought all night that they were going to tell him I had died, but they then tell him the only way for me to survive is by removing any chance of us having another baby. They returned to theatre and performed a sub-total hysterectomy, meaning that I still have my ovaries and I was not forced into the menopause at 28 years old.
This finally stopped the bleeding. I lost 8 litres altogether, which considering your body only has 5 litres, is a lot of blood!
I was returned to intensive care at about 3am and placed on a ventilator so as my body could recover and get me back fighting fit. They thought I would be asleep for a lot longer than I was, but typical me I began to wake up at noon on the 7th July, gagging at the ventilator being removed from my throat. I didn't know anything that had happened to me and everyone was told not to tell me as the consultant wanted to be able to tell me without me getting too upset. I just knew what they were going to say though. I don't know how, maybe from hearing it in my time on the ventilator, but I just knew. The consultant came in and told me, I cried lots but felt so ill still it didn't sink in straight away. I just wanted to get back to see Noah.
I finally returned to the delivery suite later that afternoon and they turned it into a high dependency room for me so that I could be with Noah and have as many visitors as I wanted.
I cried the second they wheeled me back into the room. How had things gone so wrong? I was seeing Noah properly for the first time almost 19 hours after he was born. We had no photo's of me holding him within seconds of his birth, we had no happy memories from this time. I couldn't even hold him for the first 3 days and a midwife said I needed to hold him for both our sakes. I managed to sit up and cuddle my pride and joy at last.
We came home from hospital finally on Monday 11th July and I was ready to settle into the new role of motherhood. It brought other emotions with it though. I was so upset with everything that had happened. I always wanted at least 2 children, if not more, and this had been taken from me. It was all I could think about.
I had missed so much in those first 19 hours of Noah's life, I didn't change his first nappy, didn't feed him his first bottle, didn't get to put him in the babygrow I had ready and waiting for months, wasn't the first person to cuddle him. I was desperate to never miss anything else ever in his life.
How was I going to do this though when I knew in 10 months time I had to return to work? It made this time at home with him even more precious and made me wish for a lottery win more than ever. I knew returning to work would be hard anyway, yet this made it one of the most dreaded things in my life so far.
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