Retained placenta c section?!

[Stardust26]

After having the most amazing experience delivering my beautiful baby boy by c section, 8 days later was a catastrophe.

while my healing felt okay (scar felt fine) I felt like things were taking a little longer to improve - such as my mobility. I soldiered on as best I could with amazing support, however couldn’t help feel something wasn’t quite right.

by the 8th night PP, I was about to take a shower before bed. When I took off my clothes I was absolutely horrified to see what looked like a dark red organ hanging out of me. I immediately contacted triage and was advised to get to hospital asap. My partner took me and the baby through at 10:30pm.

The nurses/midwives asked me to lay down and show them. Their reaction was very worrying as they said they were afraid to touch it as it looked like placenta - there was also a very unpleasant smell. I had to wait for a Dr to come out of theatre to take a look. It was confined 5cm of placenta membrane was having out of me with a further few centimetres remaining inside. The Dr manually removed and advised I needed to stay in over night to monitor bleeding and obs, as well as have an ultrasound the next day to see the extent of what was remaining in my womb.

I remained in hospital until 9:30pm the next night and was given strong antibiotics to take for th le next 7 days. My liver blood came back slightly off and my iron low. As you can imagine I’ve found the whole thing quite traumatic - investigations are being carried out.

I'm just posting to see if anyone at all has been through something similar as I wouldn’t expect placenta to be left behind following a c section.

Thanks!

Sounds awful, I'm so sorry you had to go through that.

Thanks for sharing the details, it really helpful to know what to look out for and to let people know that they shouldn't assume they're efinitely out of the woods after a couple of days. I would definitely have naively assumed with a C section and healing progressing as expected there was very little to worry about.

I’m so sorry that you had to go through this OP, I had a very similar experience myself but from a natural birth, on day 8 pp I haemorrhaged at home where my body was attempting to get rid of the retained placenta, which turned out to be infected with e.coli too. I ended up having it removed via surgery. The emergency and investigations were traumatic and caused me to have PTSD. I followed up with the hospital, they said it should never have been missed as it was a large chunk of placenta and that lessons will have been learned, but from what I understand it is even rarer from a c-section so definitely worth making sure it’s followed up on.

I went on to have 2 further children with no issues. Wishing you all the best in your recovery.

This happened to me 20 something years ago, post section. However it was almost 2 weeks later that it fell out as I stood up. Followed by a lot of blood that must have been blocked behind it. Like you, I had scans, IV antibiotics and then ordinary ones. I have no idea how it was left in there. When I had my second child a few years later, they checked the placenta very closely.

I had a retained placenta with my 2nd after natural birth with gas and air. Jeez the pain was excruciating, 20 years later if I think about it I still can’t believe the pain I was in. I had an epidural to have it removed, with half a dozen medical students observing too (which I agreed too, they need on-the-job training). The surgeon gave me seriously strong antibiotics as he couldn’t be sure all of it was removed. Thankfully nothing appeared, it would definitely have terrified me if it had.

Sil has this, but with a vaginal birth

She felt rough after the birth, but put it down to general fatigue

A few days later she had a raised temperature etc and had to have the placenta manually removed

Hope you feel better soon op

Apparently they inspect the placenta to check there are no missing pieces to it - looks like this does get overlooked though

Yes. 14 years ago.
Absolutely horrendous experience.
I was readmitted twice with some dramatic haemorrhaging.
The first time they suggested a D&C, until they realised it was a c-section birth.
I had weekly scans, until I could feel that it had detached, and my body was trying to expel it.

I called the GP, and he told me to pull it out, and attend A&E if there was uncontrollable bleeding. Luckily there wasn’t anything significant, but it was terrifying.

So sorry you experienced this. It’s awful.

I had placenta manually removed and they STILL managed to leave some in! 6 weeks later very ill with pelvic inflammatory disease by then it was removed - again! I don’t know how they manage to not remove it but it happens too frequently