Parker’s Birth Story and How YOU can help!

Our sweet, third child and first daughter, Parker Victoria, was born on August 21st, 2024. Like any parents growing their family we were bursting with joy and anticipation of our daughters arrival. At 40 weeks and 5 days we headed to the hospital for a scheduled induction to meet our sweet girl. The labor and delivery went pretty fast, with a check in at 7am, Pitocin by 9am and Baby girl’s arrival at 1:20pm. This momma was so pumped, it was my easiest, quickest and best delivery yet of my 3. We spent the first hour with intentional skin to skin time, where Parker screamed and fussed the entire time. My husband and I had a moment where we looked at each other and thought “uh, what are we in for with this one?” At one hour old Parker was taken to the warmer for all her newborn checkins, and this is where the story begins to turn. The nurses kept checking my uterus to confirm it was contracting back down and beginning to heal. I was only making minimal progress. After about 45 minutes of checking with little progress, it was suggested that I get up and use the restroom to ensure my bladder wasn’t full and causing swelling. Upon getting up, I barely made it 4 steps to the restroom before passing out. Thankfully I was caught and safe. I was taken back to my bed and monitored for another hour, continuing to have very heavy contractions and bleeding continuing, but not at an alarming rate. At 2.5 hours postpartum they were ready to move me to the recovery room. I sat up to get to the wheelchair and nearly passed out again. They decided sending me to recovery was not the best, as something was clearly going on. Fast forward another hour of waiting and I’m now becoming very weak, feeling slightly dizzy, depleted, still contracting and in pain. Something was wrong. They did additional fundal uterus checks and I began to pass grapefruit size blood clots. I was hemorrhaging. I was bleeding out internally, silently and we didn’t know. I was being held to together by IV drips, being stationary and most importantly by God’s grace. My doctor was paged immediately, which it was a shift change so I had 2 of my ob’s rush in to my side. A hemorrhage code was called on the floor and speedy calls to other offices were made because I needed blood, I was bleeding out. I was hemorrhaging because my placenta had not fully detached in delivery and my body thought I was still carrying a child, pumping life into a organ that was gone. The contractions, IVs and shots were not working to slow the bleeding and tell my body what was going on. After a bedside attempt at removing the retained product, with no pain killers – yikes! – I was rushed off to an emergency surgery to stop this bleeding. Personally at this point when they said surgery I was concerned but all I could think was, “will there be blood?” I’m fading, I needed blood like I need water on a hot summer day. Before leaving the delivery room, where I had now been for 8 hours, I kissed my husband and hours old baby goodbye. Not really knowing what was ahead but knowing how incredibly hard this was for my husband.

The emergency surgery was preformed and I received 4 “bulleted” (speedy) blood transfusions in 45 minutes. They had IVs going into almost every limb of my body during the surgery. Thank God I made it through the worst of it. I made it out of surgery. I received life giving blood. I was alive to see my brand new baby girl again.

I finally made it to the recovery room late that night and while my husband slept that I replayed the events of the day over and over, terrified to fall asleep because I felt too close to passing out. The next day after beginning to nurse our new baby I felt weak and dizzy again. My first though was “oh no, its happening again, I’m going to pass out”. I again needed more blood. After approvals were gathered I received my fifth blood transfusion in 12 hours.

My doctors and I did the rough volume math and its estimated that I lost close to 50% of my blood volume the day Parker was born. Had I not received the multiple blood transfusions I would not be here today, penning this story. The surgery helped me and sustained me, but the blood saved me. So as we come to the one year birthday of our sweet girl I want to honor the gift of blood that I received and ask that everyone we know please donate blood, because I can first hand attest, it really does save a life.