Life as a Hospital Patient

So, it is too emotionally difficult to post about Weston's death right now. This topic was something I had planned to post about anyway, as I didn't start blogging until after Weston was born. It seems very strange to be blogging about my hospital stay after his death, but it is part of his story. Sadly, his story has to be told in random order because his life was so short. But it is much easier to blog about my hospital stay. As scary as it was, I was still full of hope at that time. So here it is, completely with lots of personal pregnancy symptoms.


Until I had Caroline, I had never spent a single night in the hospital. It was even rare that I had ever visited someone in the hospital, as my family and friends have generally been blessed with good health. Being a long-term hospital patient was completely beyond my comprehension. I spent 27 nights in the hospital as a patient during and after my pregnancy with Weston.

On Monday, June 11, 2012, I went to the hospital for the first time because my bleeding had become heavier. I sat in OB triage for a while with Shannon, waited anxiously for the ultrasound that would tell me my baby was OK, fought off a vaginal exam, and was eventually admitted. This is when the incessant refrain "We can't do anything for your baby" started, which I have mentioned in a previous post. I was 20 weeks 3 days pregnant at that time, and everyone drilled into me the importance of making it to 24 weeks (July 6). I felt like that was a lifetime away.

Dr. G did rounds every morning, so I went from seeing him once a month to once a day. He told me I would be in the hospital until the bleeding subsided. The ultrasound showed that the bleed area was back to its original size, after having shrunk to half its original size just a few days before. At my last office appointment with Dr. G, he had changed my diagnosis to chronic placental abruption, or chronic abruption, because the placenta had not reattached like he thought it would.

When I went from triage to my own hospital room, I was told I would have a roommate. I was horrified. But they found an empty room within a couple of minutes, so they put me in there. It was a two-bed room, but I was assured that I would most likely not have a roommate. The nurse was ordered to check my vitals every four hours, so I knew my sleep was going to be interrupted.


Meanwhile, Shannon had gone home, and he brought Caroline to visit later that afternoon. She looked very nervous when she entered my hospital room. Within just a couple of minutes, a phlebotomist came in to draw blood. Caroline saw the lab coat and medical supplies and burst into tears. She hates going to the doctor's office, so she probably thought the phlebotomist was coming for her.


I was discharged three days later, on a Thursday afternoon. My stay had been pretty uneventful, and I had  had several visitors. The bleeding had gradually subsided but not disappeared. I was instructed to stay horizontal except for bathroom and showering and to come back if the bleeding got worse. 

Over the next couple of days, I was blessed with more visitors at home, and food. Although I was glad to be home, I had come to the realization that this problem was not going to go away anytime soon and knew that we had to come up with a longer-term plan for care for Caroline and help for me.

Only 2.5 days later, on June 17 (Father's Day), I woke up with even heavier bleeding. I laid in bed and tried not to move, but it was bad. It got on my sheets. I told Shannon we had to go back to the hospital. Knowing I would be admitted immediately this time, I packed a bag and included a laptop and Nook that a friend had graciously let me borrow (and that I still need to return!). I also took a shower and put on makeup. I had not had time to take a shower before my previous hospital admission, and I was going to be clean and pretty this time!

Shannon had to drive me to the hospital with Caroline. Kids aren't allowed in triage, so they took me inside the hospital but had to leave when I went into triage. It was very difficult. Again, I didn't know if the baby was OK, and I was going to have to face the next several hours of medical procedures alone. Fortunately, I didn't have to stay in triage long. The resident called Dr. G, who told her that I had earned at least a week's stay in the hospital. I was 21 weeks 2 days pregnant by this time. Within just a few days, Dr. G told me I would have to stay until I had the baby.

Upon admission, I was taken to the room next to my old room. Within a day or two, I was moved again to a PRIVATE room with the best view in the hall. Although the private room was a bit smaller, it only had one bed, so I knew I would never have a roommate, and there was much more space for visitors. The only downside to the private room was that the shower was down the hall, but I was allowed to walk to the shower.

I had wheelchair privileges, so Shannon or my mom would wheel me down to the main lobby for a (decaf) Starbucks frappuccino every afternoon. There was a player piano down there, big windows, and a lot of space for Caroline to play. Those were the highlights of my days. Twice, it even cooled down enough to go outside.


My nurses were wonderful. I was there so long that I got to know a lot of them pretty well. I had unlimited time to think and obsess about things, and their emotional support was just as important as their taking care of me physically. It was weird in some ways: although I feared for my baby's health and safety constantly, I was not actually in any pain, at least not in the beginning. It was almost like I wasn't really a patient. Although my vitals were checked constantly and I was on medication, it didn't really sink in for weeks that there were serious risks to me as well. Any time the placenta detaches from the uterine wall, there is bleeding, as I obviously experienced. However, if the placenta detaches enough, the mother can hemorrhage and literally bleed to death. I didn't care about any of this: I figured I was being watched close enough by the medical staff. I just wanted my baby to be ok. And of course he would not have been ok if something catastrophic happened to me, but I wasn't thinking about that.


My hospital stay gave me time to count my blessings. I had so many visitors that I had to take a break from them for a few days (and these few days turned out to be the last days of my pregnancy). I hardly ever had to eat hospital food, because friends and family brought lunch and dinner so often. My mom stayed at our house and took care of Caroline when Shannon was working. They came to visit every day.

I tried to organize my time somewhat. I started watching the TV show Mad Men relatively later in my hospital stay: one episode per night. I made it through episode 1 of season two. That Don Draper has some serious issues! I really enjoyed the show, but I think it would be too painful to watch it now. I was filled with so much hope during my last week of pregnancy (more on that later), and my goal was to make it through season two, which would have gotten me pretty close to 28 weeks. So, to me, Mad Men represents hope that has died.

My family is obsessed with personality tests. I have taken and retaken tests over the years and have always been labeled as an extrovert. Recently, I have been wondering if I am outgrowing extraversion. Well, my time in the hospital has confirmed, absolutely without a doubt, that I am an extreme extrovert. I thrived on having visitors, and I got to know everyone who ever came into my room, from the perinatologists to the nurses to the social workers to the cleaning staff. Still, I had plenty of time to reflect, pray, and be alone with my thoughts.

Speaking of time, I had enough of it to read through almost the entire Supreme Court decision affirming the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). Then I probably got sidetracked by another heavy bleeding episode or something equally pleasant. Anway, that decision was handed down the same week that the Supreme Court upheld the most controversial part of SB 1070 (Arizona's ridiculous attempt at immigration reform). Oops, did I get political again? One morning soon after the Obamacare decision, Dr. G asked if I'd been keeping up on the news. I said, "Oh yes, it's been a big week at the Supreme Court, etc., etc." He said, "Oh, that. No, the big news today is that Andy Griffith died."

Living in the hospital, essentially separated from my family, was horrible. But, looking back, it was a unique, even special, time in my life. I got to see the goodness of so many people. It was a time of intense fear, but also intense hope that my pregnancy would progress far enough and that my baby would survive. And, it was some of the only time that Weston and I had alone. I called him, wait for it, "baby" because we had chosen not to find out the sex. I wanted to call him Weston so badly, because I was just sure he was a boy. :-) But I felt a little bad doing that in the off chance we were having a girl.

Expectant mothers often say that they talk to their babies in utero out loud. I didn't do that much with Weston, except when we were trying to find his heartbeat on the Doppler. He hated that thing and always tried to get away from it! But I spoke to him silently all the time. I guess we had so much quiet time in my hospital room that the spoken word was not needed. More than anything else, though, I prayed for my little boy to stay where he was for a long, long time. He stayed just long enough but, in hindsight, not nearly long enough.