Hi everyone,
For DC1 I had a pretty good, fast natural labour (6hrs) at a midwife-only unit, but an hour later my placenta wouldn’t come out.
The midwives gave me Syntocinon, and manually tried to pull it out, but the cord snapped so I was put in the ambulance to hospital with blue lights, for removal.
At hospital they tried again to manually remove but couldn’t. They said I would go for theatre soon to remove it, but there was a delay as there was a Caesarian taking place.
As I waited, my pain grew and grew as my uterus tried to push out the trapped placenta, but apparently my Cervix was now closed. I had gas and air but it barely made a difference. There were more delays (another cesarian apparently) and I just had to wait for hours, but it was agony, I kept passing out and genuinely thought I was going to die.
5 hrs later I had a spinal and a successful removal of the placenta, so thank goodness all was well again. However I had huge clots in my uterus and they now realised I had lost over 3.5 litres of blood.
(I think because my cervix was closed, and the blood was clotting inside, they hadn’t realised the haemorrhage was so severe)
I had a blood transfusion and went home the next day (wish I hadn’t left so soon!!) but was wrecked for weeks afterwards.
I guess my questions are - has anyone else had to endure a delay like that? I really felt like they didn’t believe the pain I was in, and having arrived at hospital under blue lights thinking I was an emergency, it was shocking to have to wait so long.
Of course I am hugely hugely grateful that both baby and I are now healthy, but I do have questions about the way I was left for so long. I definitely get flashbacks over the 5 hour wait, and a degree of PTSD.
Anyway I will stop here, but if anyone can share their thoughts, it might give me some perspective and help me get over it.
Thank you for reading