Well my story starts back in 2000...life was completely different. I was with my ex-husband, which I don't like to talk but it's where I was at the time. Struggling to get pregnant for almost 2 years...young and naive thinking it will happen and honestly in no big rush even though I really wanted a baby.
Fast forward til 2004 and my ex had just returned from a deployment and I got pregnant with my angel Devin. My pregnancy did take me by surprise and was far from easy. Starting with my first embarrassing and scary moment at week 10 while at an appointment on base for a military ID I felt a gush and hurried to the bathroom to see what was going on. Only to find I was bleeding and headed straight to the ER and spent the next few hours having scans to find out I had a small tear in my placenta. I was sent home to be and put on bed rest. Which meant I lost my job which caused much more stress on an already strained marriage. I began having problems with my blood pressure but it was controlled by medicine. I started seeing a high risk doctor every two weeks to be monitored when during some of my bloodwork I got a positive for nueral tube defects. I was scared to say the least but ready because no matter what I would love my baby. I was able to find out that I was having a boy and got to see his precious face every two weeks which was awesome. Even got 3D ultrasounds which back then was not as common. It came time for me to take the gestational diabetes screening and unfortunately for the staff at Lapcorp I couldn't keep it down and unfortunately for me that meant I would spend the rest of my pregnancy being treated for gestational diabetes since my blood work borderline. Most of my pregnancy was spent puking my guts out and if you know me, that's not something I handle very well...hyperventilating is never a good thing. I somehow managed to puke by myself since before that I could count on one hand all the times I had ever puked without my mom there to calm me down. I watched way too many episodes of A Baby Story and knew exactly what time it was by the TV shows on at the time and spent many sleepless nights but my baby was growing and he would be here in just a few short months. My scans at the high risk doctor were all showing no abnormalities and my test was a false positive. The clot that had been on my placenta was healing and things were going well. I had been released to partial bed rest meaning I could drive myself to the doctor or library or an occasional cake decorating class etc to get out of the house some. The home life I was in at the time was far from great so getting out was great for the depression I was also suffering from. Like I said before I was sick a lot so when I didn't feel well on November 23rd I really didn't think much about it. It was late, I had did my kick counts and checked my blood pressure so I just spent a sleepless night tossing and turning with a plan to call the doctor first thing in the morning. I had felt bad before and it was nothing in particular just a feeling on not feeling well. My cat Soxy must have known because she stayed by my side that entire night sleeping in the chair next to me.
That Wednesday morning November 24th my life would forever change. I stood up to go to the bathroom and I felt a gush. I thought maybe it was my water breaking, I was 31 weeks and I was scared. I got to the bathroom to realize that I was bleeding out and bad. My ex was out of the country(long story) and my MIL (another long story) was down stairs but couldn't hear me screaming for help. I finally managed to get back to my room and call her cell phone so she would come help me. We had recently moved out into the country and so it was a good 30 minute or more drive. So we decided to just drive instead of wait for the ambulance. I was so scared. My stomach was so hard and I think I knew but didn't want to believe what I thought was happening. I couldn't feel my sweet angel moving any more. I remembered when the doctor talked to me about the tear in my placenta and he told me how one of his patients came to him bleeding so bad and couldn't believe she was standing there let alone the baby was ok...but the baby was. He was later born happy and healthy. I wanted to believe that was going to be my story. The doctor examined me and remained calm and told me that we were going to have a baby today, I needed to go across the street to the hospital and he would meet me there shortly. At that point I believed everything was going to be ok. There was a nurse waiting outside with a wheelchair who took me straight to L&D in the same room where I spent a few afternoons getting fluids a few weeks earlier from all the puking I had been doing. There were people all around me working on me, I was scared yes but still thought it was going to be ok. Dr. Tomlin came in and performed an ultrasound. That's when he turned to me and said the worst words I have ever heard. " He didn't make it and you are bleeding to death. I need to save your life." The nurses were all working frantically and I was being wheeled out of my room within a minute and into an OR. Waiting in the OR was a nurse from his office.
