Ok, first I just have to say that I strongly dislike Elton John right now. Sitting in an ER for 8 hours with "The Circle of Life" stuck in your head sucks. It mostly sucks because the song sounds so beautiful and happy and wonderful when in reality those 8 hours were messy, heartbreaking and slightly embarrassing. (Oh, and from here on out there's a little TMI so if you're squeamish...stop reading.)
When you're pregnant, the baby eats your brain and you forget things or you don't believe things or you just don't want to believe things, so when I started having some light bleeding a few days before I was thinking "I'm sure it's nothing. Those women on TV who never knew they were pregnant had bleeding all the time and their babies were fine. Sometimes it just...happens". Of course in my 4 previous pregnancies it had never happened, but I was determined to be optimistic. "Every pregnancy is different". Then reality finally hit me. I went to the bathroom and suddenly I was passing blood clots and bleeding everywhere. I tried to be cool, took a shower, called my husband, didn't tell anyone else, but it didn't work for long. My Grandma and Grandpa-In-Law drove me to the hospital and my Hubby met us there and as soon as I got out of the car I started bleeding worse. I could feel it running down my leg and as I was walking I could feel my jeans sticking to me. I got into a wheel chair - thankfully, happily even, I just didn't want anyone to see my pants - and that's where I stayed for quite a while.
First there was triage where they asked questions, drew blood, ordered tests and gave me drugs. I figured, since I had time before the ultrasound, I should go to the bathroom. I have to say that there has been nothing in my life more heartbreaking than pulling a dead embryo out of my own vagina. And when we got to ultrasound there was nothing on the screen but my empty uterus. From there on out the bleeding slowed down and the drugs kicked in and I just tried to rest. When they finally got me back to a room and did an exam the NP told me that I had passed some tissue on the table and that my cervix was now closed so the process was complete. She explained that sometimes these things just happen and it wasn't because of anything I did and that I could get dressed and go home. Here's where it gets embarrassing; when the nurse cleaned up the absorbent sheet after the exam, she took my undies too and everything went in the trash! So, the nurse put a diaper on me and not the adult-underwear-ish type. This was a giant, plastic-covered, tapes-together-like-you're-a-baby diaper! Great! And to top it off, I had to put on jeans that had been soaked in blood and then sat in for 8 hours! (That's because we live in Retired-Ville and everything closes at 8:00 so there was nowhere to go get anything new.)
So, we went home - emotionally and physically exhausted - and I thought everything would be fine the next day. WRONG! I found out that you need to rest almost as much as actually having a baby and that the bleeding lasts much longer than you would think. I tried to be a superhero and went shopping the next day, bad idea. The cramping and bleeding got worse. So, here I've been, hardly getting out of bed for almost a week and I think I'm finally getting better.
