Share your story with ICAN to be featured on our Instagram and Facebook! All cesarean and birth-after-cesarean stories are welcome: the difficult, the triumphant, the still-processing, and the stories which haven’t yet been shared. Sharing your birth story can be freeing, healing and profoundly powerful. It can bring others hope, comfort, and reassurance that they are not alone on their birth journey.
Submit your story HERE: https://airtable.com/shrJOtXla9O9MVBaj
On August 4th I went in for a planned C-section. Although I was nervous, at least I knew what to expect this time around as my first was an emergency. Everything in the operating room went smooth. I was able to do skin to skin which was something I never got to experience with my older son.
After recovery they took me into my room and that is when everything changed. I started to feel very sick I couldn’t keep anything down, including water, and I felt weak and dizzy. The nurse insisted it was probably due to the spinal block and that it would go away. It never did and I continued to feel sick throughout the day and that night. They finally ran some blood work and discovered I was losing a ton of blood.
The next day I received two units of blood. I felt better but I still did not feel right. Later that night we were able to talk with my doctor and gave him our concerns. This is when we had found out that I had a hematoma and that was why I was losing blood. He decided it would be best to do a CT scan and see if I was still losing blood.
An hour after the scan my doctor came in and told me I was going to be rushed into emergency surgery. The hematoma was the size of a basketball and if we didn’t operate I would continue to lose blood. I was so scared and I could tell my husband was as well.
I was in surgery for two hours when I woke up I was alone in recovery and began to have a panic attack. They had put my belly band on too tight and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. On top of that with COVID restrictions I had a mask on. No matter what I said the nurse would not let me remove the mask. That had to be one of the most traumatizing parts of the whole ordeal.
I had to spend a total of 6 days in the hospital. I am almost 7 weeks post-partum now and am still dealing with complications. With all of what my body went through I was not able to breastfeed. My milk didn’t come in until I was almost 3 weeks pp and when it did my supply was so low it wasn’t even worth pumping, although I tried for weeks.
Although this is the hardest thing I have ever gone through it made me really appreciate life and realize how fragile it truly is. I am glad I get to be here today for my kids.
