The Worst Day of My Life and The Day in The ER and The OR. by Nicole

I'm going to do my best to tell you the tale of the last few days in our life while sparing some gruesome details, but I can't spare them all and give you the story, so read (if you want) on knowing you could be disgusted :)

We found out I was going to have a miscarriage long before I actually had the miscarriage. This made the last 2 weeks seem like they would never end of course, as we seemed to be waiting for the event to happen every moment of every day.

Well, the day finally arrived. I was woken up around 2am with terrible cramping on Saturday, the 16th (i had a lovely birthday celebration the night before, which was nice of my body to hold off for!). I took some Advil, and managed to get some more sleep. The next morning, while Trent was working, I tried going about with my normal routine with Ila, but found myself sitting on the couch, hoping the cramps would ease up. I called Trent to let him know I was in a lot of pain, and he encouraged me and reminded me that I was tough, and we would get through it.

At 10 am, the floodgates opened, quite literally. Sparing you the many bloody details of the worst day of my life I will tell you that I called Trent and told him that blood was gushing out of me, and I needed him to come home right away. 20 minutes later he was by my side assessing the situation. He deemed that a call to his mom, a nurse for 30+ years was necessary. We talked to Nurse Mommy many times that day, and also talked to my OB a few times as well. I spent the day holding a heating pack to my abdomen, running back and forth to the bathroom and I took 3 showers in 5 hours. Because God is so good, we had stayed out very late the night before which means Ila stayed up late, so she slept for 4 out of the 7 hours of chaos in the house!

After discussing my situation with the doctor, she encouraged us to come to the ER if the bleeding didn't stop in the next little bit. Well, it stopped, and we praised the Lord to have the miscarriage over and done with after 7 long, painful, draining (in so many ways) hours. I spent the rest of the evening and the next day on the couch, while Trent was super dad and super husband and took wonderful care of his girls!

Monday morning came early, as I had to be at an OB appointment at 8 am. Upon awakening, I had some abdominal pain that skyrocketed when I emptied my bladder. So while I laid on the bed with the heating pad Trent got everything ready for our supposed quick trip to the doc and back home. Well, God certainly directed our steps because we got into town just in time for our cancelled doctors appointment (the doc called in sick 10 minutes before our appointment). I saw the nurse and she told us I should probably go to the hospital if my pain was so terrible. Well, my pain was nothing compared to where it went in the next 15 minutes while I tried convincing myself that really there was NO pain. I had told Trent as we drove in the direction of the hospital that maybe if we ate some breakfast and got some coffee, the pain would go away. While he was in Safeway getting breakfast my pain went from 4-15 on the 1-10 scale they use at the hospital. I yelled and Ila yelled back (she is such a mimicker) I thrashed about and she thrashed about. I felt terrible that she was having to watch mommy hurt so much, and she thought we were playing. We went straight to the hospital, and on the way I said my goodbyes to Trent and Ila, because I genuinely thought I was dying. I gave Trent permission to make fun of me for saying goodbye, if I lived through the day though, and didn't mention to him that he should marry someone less pretty then me next time around (to respect my memory of course).

At the hospital they gave me drugs for the pain, which at first I felt weak and silly for having, and I made sure to tell anyone who would listen that I birthed my daughter without ANY drugs. No one seemed surprised that I needed drugs though, at the situation at hand was quite different then brining a beautiful live baby into the world. They gave me refills as needed, and I am so thankful to the nice nurse who kept my pain level manageable as we dealt with everything going on. I'll skip details here about all fluid and tissue still in my uterus and tell you that we were given two options:

1. have a D&C

2. wait and see if the miscarriage will happen on it's own.

Although they gave us the options, they strongly recommended the D&C for several reasons. I was having unproductive contractions (even though my body was trying to push everything out, it was not coming out). This was much more painful then the productive contractions I had on Saturday, but it did make for less of a mess. And at that point, I was 12 weeks along, and the miscarriage had occurred at 9 weeks (hypothesized by the OB on call that day) and I had so much fluid in there the risk of excessive bleeding and other complications was higher then the possible complications with the D&C. They were also concerned with the pain and didn't think I could pass the miscarriage without some seriously strong drugs, and I'd have to agree.

So to the OR I went, where I had the procedure. The doctor and his nurse were absolutely wonderful and we really felt like we were in good hands. The procedure takes about 10 minutes, but they have to put you under (which is really better, because who wants to remember that anyway?!) and I was a hoot coming out of anesthesia (or so I'm told). I don't know why the whole surgery room didn't remember being in that episode of Glee with me, but they were at least nice about not remembering it! I also made a few nurses laugh on the way into surgery (they had given me some sort of drug to help me relax) by kindly requesting they didn't use the bone cutters or sternum splitting devices (that were so clearly labeled on a basket outside the OR) during my procedure.

Immediately after the procedure, while coming out of my happy land, I do remember being in quite a bit of pain, and I told them so, and they gave me something for it. But other then that moment, I've been relatively pain free and feeling great. I'm on bed rest for 1-2 days though, because as great as I feel (especially compared to yesterday at this time) my body needs me to take it easy so I can fully heal. My mom was here by the time we got home from the hospital so Trent can work and not worry about me taking care of Ila and myself.

I'm continually in awe of the way God works. It would have been the most painful hour of my life to drive into town to the hospital when it became apparent that I needed to go. He orchestrated it so that we were in town by the time the pain was unbearable and I needed medical attention. I think that is just awesome!

We are so appreciative for the prayers we knew were coming our way yesterday as we went through all of this. We are also glad that the physical aspect of the miscarriage is over so we can focus on emotionally healing. I can't write our story of this without mentioning how amazing Ila was yesterday. We have felt very blessed again and again for her overall sweet personality and how easy going she is, but yesterday was almost unbelievable. She was so good, and only got an hour nap in. She was as sweet as can be, and made a lot of new nurse friends in the ER. Everyone loved her and she loved everyone. So, there it is. Thank you again friends and family for your thought and prayers. We are doing well, and feeling very loved and supported by you all during this time.