Hello. Sorry, it is a long one. I recently gave birth and had an extremely traumatic experience. I had placenta praevia (low lying) which was diagnosed at 20 week scan, and checked at 32 weeks & 35 weeks but had not moved. I had no bleeding in the pregnancy and the birth was planned for an elective c section at 37 weeks.
Unfortunately, the c-section resulted in a haemorrhage where I lost 5000ml of blood, and sadly resulted in an emergency hysterectomy. I still feel quite down about this but was coming to terms with it as although the figures show it is rare (7-8 in 1000 people) and apart from the Placenta Praevia itself, there was no other signs at all in the scans nor any bleeding which made me think I would potentially experience this. I was in and out of consciousness in the operation and was put under general anaesthetic, and spent the next 24 hours in ICU.
I am grateful to have made it out alive and it was extremely emotional for me to start with but had slowly started to come to terms with it. Then I received a call from the hospital that they will carry out a Duty of Candour and will be carrying out an investigation/full review so they can avoid such things happening in the future. I had never heard of this prior and had a quick search on the internet - it feels now somewhat clearer. I will be meeting the consultant for a debrief and to clear any questions I may have.
If anybody has any tips/advice on the ceasarian hysterectomy then I would really appreciate it. In my appointments it was probably only mentioned once very briefly if that, that it can happen but also that it is very rare - that was the end of it with no further discussion about it. So I went into that operation completely unprepared of what could come and instead had a whole different ordeal to what I was expecting! Likewise, if anybody has more of an insight what the review entails and what I can discuss prior (I have been asked to provide any perspectives, what I recall/remember etc).
Thanks in advance