How is blood loss mesured?

[Sonilaa]

I ask that because with dc1 I lost a lot of blood (500ml was in the birth report) + had a pph a few hours later (again about 500ml). I wonder how they got the numbers?

One can hardly aim for the bucket in that situation

yes, am curious as well, I lost "a pint of blood" at dd birth

It isn't a precise art but we do try.....
Operating theatres routinely do the following:
swabs are weighed wet then the dry weight subtracted = estimated blood loss

any stuff which is sucked up is measured as a volume (usually some allowance is made for liquor from round the baby).

Any left lying around at the end eg. on sheets/ floor etc is estimated sometimes by mopping it up on cloths with a known dry weight which are then weighed wet.

These methods are employed on Labour ward too but sometimes less precisely.

wow! v interesting. thanks

How interesting, I had no idea...

How about a (home) water birth? I assumed the mws did it on sight. And my other births where majority of blood went on plastic sheets, an old duvet, some towels and the carpet (whoops).

tis the precise science of estimation!

also remember that
a. if you give blood you donate 470ml. quite safely.
b. a pregnant woman's blood volume is much bigger than a non-pregnant woman.
c. unless you are already very anaemic 500ml isn't going to make much difference.
But it is very individual - some women can bleed like a stuck pig, all over the floor, 1000ml-ish and still bounce up. Others appear to bleed very little and look like floppy ghosts the day after.

I knew I was when in trouble when I heard the someone say "We had better start weighing the blood loss."

Oh aye and the splashing on the floor when they took my 'moonboots' off!

Yes I was the floppy ghost after a less than 150ml blood loss

having to grab a bed sheet to mop up blood loss is a good indicator of PPH .....

I was always about the reported amount of blood I lost because I was in the pool - must be v hard to measure.

I can't work out how they didn't know I had lost a lot of blood. I had a blood transfusion 3 days after giving birth after a bllod test showed my hb levels were at around 6. I needed 3 'bags'. Why didn't they see? Where did the blood go? Me and dh vaguely remember someone lifting a big blue bag that looked full of blood when they were clearing up.
Pah!

Sorry blood not bllod and hb was 6.5 not just 6 (but I dunno what it all means anyway!)

My hb was 6.5 as well and had a transfusion of 4 bags, 3 days after giving birth to DS1. I thought that was a long time after the birth to have a transfusion, makes me feel better knowing you had it too barbareebaahumbug! I STILL wonder how I lost all that blood! Maybe it's best I don't know about it! Just hope it doesn't happen again when I deliver DS2!

I've always wondered this. Both of mine were relatively 'clean', and notes for DS1 said I lost 150ml. I always wondered how they knew/measured it, and if that was a lot/not very much! (Clearly it wasn't a lot, as there wasn't any splashed all over the floor!)

i lost 1600ml...but did not really know much about it apart from my husband saying the delivery room was like something from a horror film and the fact that i was grey for about 3 days afterwards! I did wonder though how hey estimated it so interesting info!

I lost 2500ml after the birth of my ds. There was slight panic in the delivery room and lots of alarms. My husband was so calm and kept telling me I was fine, we were the calmest people in the room! I had 2 transfusions after this, but felt terrible for days and was in hospital for 5 days. I couldn't get out of bed for a couple of days without fainting and didn't have the strength to lift up ds on my own for a couple of days. I am convinced that the drugs they pumped into me to try and stop the bleeding effected my breastmilk, as I only had colostrum for what seemed like weeks and my 10lb baby boy needing topping up with formula from day 7. Anyone else have experience of this?

I had a pph after dc2, emergency c section, they must have nicked something but didn't realise at the time, they said it was a very dry sedction so they put a drain in incase I lost more internally and sewed me up. Then I proceeded to loose 3,400ml into 6 drain bottles, at one point they couldn't change them quick enough! Was v v v scary. My heamoglobin levels were 4, blood pressure was 20/40, I had 6 transfusions and can no longer donate blood :-(

So I know to the exact ml how much I lost because it was all collected in bottles! Nice!!