Update from the hospital

Hey Everyone,

The past 26 hours has been a journey I will never forget. It all started at my home yesterday afternoon. I was having a steering team meeting for MOPS at my house; so it was me along with 10 other ladies. I was sitting on the couch while we were having our closing prayer (current time 2:00-2:15pm). After prayer time it was time to eat some dessert and make an adorable craft! I walked to the kitchen to defrost the berries for the angel food cake and then realized that something was not feeling right. I decided I was sure it wasn't anything big so I finished what I was doing and then was just going to go to my bedroom to "freshen" up. As I turned around to walk out of the kitchen and through the living room I saw where I was sitting and then it hit me that it wasn't good.

Since we found out at (20 weeks) that I had placenta previa we were always told that the baby will be fine but that I definitely do not want to start bleeding. Yesterday I was at 34 weeks and 5 days. I have not yet been on much restrictions due to me feeling fine and no spotting; everything was going good. When I saw the blood on my couch all I could think about is; the worst thing that could happen with this "diagnosis" that I have is happening. I turned around to say something to the ladies and even though I don't remember exactly what I said it something along the lines of "I am not trying to freak anyone out but I'm bleeding". After I verbally said I immediately started to cry and walk to my room to change. I remember holding onto my dresser having a difficult time breathing and then remember how incredible all my mommy friends were. One helped me get a new pair of pants out, one was calling my mom, one was calling my husband, one was pulling up her car for me and then out the door I went. I later found out that they also cleaned my couch for me by putting the seat cover in the washer and it came out!!!

My friend Sarah was the one that took me to the ER. As we were in the car she just held my hand and was reassuring me that everything would be okay. I slowly started to relax and we even had a couple of laughs together in the car. The last laugh was because she dropped me off at the wrong door - although we didn't realize it until we walked in and saw that it was the Education Center instead of the ER; we laughed pretty good at that one.

After checking into the ER they took me to the OB where they started monitoring me and checking my vitals. The nurse that was assisting me was my old neighbor when we lived next to my parents; so that was really nice to have her. It was also really reassuring when I was still getting onto the bed and Dr. Blohm (my brother and sister-in-laws doctor) walked into the room. It's just always nice to see the face of a doctor that you know and trust. She was there in the room with me until my normal doctor got there (which didn't take long because she was at the hospital doing paperwork). Then Dr. Blohm asked me "Didn't I see you this morning walking; I was the one that passed you running?". Yup it was me walking with my mom. She was then also kind of glad she was there because she was able to see what placenta previa looked liked on an ultrasound screen, I guess she has been educating herself more on this type of situation and being to recognize it herself.

(Oh yeah by this point Tom has arrived to the hospital; he was at work.)

They ran a lab on me to make sure that there was no amniotic fluid along with the blood and there wasn't. This was a huge blessing because that meant I was not in labor and the baby was completely fine through all of this!!! Dr. Strabel then tried to look to see further where the blood was coming from but there was too much for her to be able to tell. I was then being shipped to Madison to the St. Mary's hospital by ambulance. At this point my mom was also at the hospital to drop off our camera and video camera just in case we were going to be become a family of four yesterday.

Once I got into the ambulance (Tom drove separately to the hospital so that we would have a vehicle in Madison for when we were discharged from the hospital to get home) the clock said 4:00pm - I am thinking I arrived at the Portage ER around 2:30pm. The gentlemen that took me to Madison were really nice (Jon and Richard - I think that was his name) - we had some pretty good laughs on the way. During our road trip I did actually almost fall asleep but then Jon asked "Are you feeling okay?" in a concerned voice and I said that I was but asked why he was wondering. He said my blood pressure was dropping and getting kind of low so he just cranked up my fluids some which did bring my blood pressure back up a bit. At the hospital I was 124/? and in the ambulance it dropped to 101/62; by the time we go to the hospital I was back up to 108/?.

That is how the past 26 hours started - stay tuned for your next update ;)