My Birthday In The ER

This was originally written on Monday, December 31, 2007

Happy New Year's Eve! The end of 2007!

Two days after I last wrote was my 28th birthday (Friday, December 21st). That afternoon I decided I needed some more maternity clothes; I returned home at 2:30 pm (the same hour I was born), took off my shoes, and carried each sack separately from the door to its final resting place. When I came back to our entry-way by our garage (our laundry room) for my last sack, I felt a prick to my right foot. At first I thought it was just a rock, but as I lifted up my foot, worse pain than I've ever had shot through me!

I crumbled to the ground and screamed. I ripped off my sock and blood gushed out of my foot. I started crying, mostly from fear--as the blood would not stop! It was spurting all over the vinyl floor! There were actual pools of thick, dark blood forming on the ground. I never would have thought something too small for me to have seen could have caused so much blood.

As blood continued to gush out, getting absolutely everywhere, I realized that I needed to stop the bleeding NOW or this could quickly turn serious. All I could think about was my baby! my baby! So I crawled to a roll of paper towels and pressed some to my wound. It hurt, as I could tell I was pushing whatever I'd stepped on farther into my foot. At first the bleeding still didn't stop--blood was quickly soaking through the paper towels. But finally it slowed down and ceased.

Thankfully, my purse with my cell phone happened to be nearby, so I called Joe. I choked out the words, "I stepped on something. . .there's blood all over." Joe didn't ask for more details. He said, "I'm coming home."

It was the longest twenty minutes ever. I had called him at 2:45 and he arrived at 3:05 exactly. During that time I calmed myself down. I knew stress was not good for the baby and so I forced myself to stop crying, to breathe normally, and to focus on the fact that my foot had stopped bleading--rather than the amount that I'd lost all over the floor.

Joe said later that he was shocked when he walked through the door; he hadn't expected it to look like a crime scene. I later took a picture because it was so crazy.

Joe suggested we go to the emergency room after he'd tried to get the unknown object out of my foot and it'd started bleeding again. I was also wincing like crazy, but I told myself that this pain didn't compare to the pain I'll be in four months. :p

Since I couldn't walk, Joe literally picked me up (baby and all) and put me into his car that was still running on our driveway. You might remember me saying that my doctor's office (which is across from a hospital) is just down the street from us, so fortunately it was very convenient.

Joe ran into the front entrance and came out a minute later, as we were supposed to drive to the back of the building for the ER. He ran inside and came out with a wheelchair. (Now that I've seen him in a crisis, I have no doubt he'll be a great husband during my labor/delivery!) The whole experience was surreal. I haven't had to deal with hospitals much in my life, so I felt like I was on an episode of Grey's Anatomy. :p

I was able to hobble to the wheelchair and then Joe wheeled me in. He filled out my paperwork while a man (the nurse) came out to get me. He was super nice, which helped me to relax since I knew I was in the best place I could be at that point. He took my blood pressure which had sky-rocketed from just three days earlier when I'd had my ultrasound and it'd been at a perfect level. He said that was normal under these circumstances.

He then took a look at my foot. . .and pulled out the object: a piece of glass! I was shocked, as I couldn't remember anything ever breaking in our laundry room/entry way. The theory is that either it was still there from when workers built our house over the summer, or since we take our trash out that way, when we broke a drinking glass a month or two ago a piece cut through the bag and fell to the ground.

Fortunately, the bleeding permanently stopped so that was a good sign. He then got out the doppler to check the baby's heartbeat and right away I was relieved because guess what his words were? "Wow, he's really moving around a lot!" Whew, my baby was his normal self :-)

His heartbeat was 150 which wasn't elevated, so I was glad my son didn't seem to be affected negatively by the experience. I had been praying HARD ever since it'd happened, because I was also worried about what they'd want to do at the hospital and I wanted my baby's life to be like this had never happened.

Sure enough, they wanted to do two things. A woman doctor took the man's place--I believe she was a resident because she seemed the exact same age as me--and she told me I'd need both an x-ray and a tetanus shot. I completely lost it at that point. I'd been so calm with the guy, but with her I started crying and couldn't stop myself! She looked at me like I was a complete loser, so I knew she obviously had never been pregnant.

She was like, "Why are you crying? Is it because of the pain?"
I shook my head and said, "No, I just really don't want to have those things."
She raised her eyebrows as if I was an idiot. "Uh, there's no need for you to feel that way. You're in the second trimester now so you're not as likely to have birth defects from the x-ray, and the tetanus shot is safe at all times."

But I'd read about the dangers of x-rays, and also how doctors don't always know what's best--many still push things that we find out later are bad for babies. In my heart I just didn't feel the x-ray was necessary. The nurse had gotten all of the glass out of my foot and I hadn't injured it in any other way. It didn't seem worth the risk to me.

Joe came into the room at that point which helped me to relax again, and the doctor shrugged and left. Both she and then the male nurse when he returned explained that the foot is the most likely place in the body to get infected because we use it more than any other body part and it's warm & moist when we wear socks and shoes. The tetanus shot would prevent infection to myself and the baby. So, I compromised and got the tetanus shot. The nurse gave it to me after showing my wound and the glass to the head foot doctor, and then he bandaged up my foot (no stitches, whew!). I was able to put on my sock and shoe, and practice standing and walking. It felt A LOT better now that the glass was out. I was confident I would be all right, so I thanked him and then left the hospital with Joe.

By this time it was already 4:30 pm, and although I felt like just going home to bed, I refused to have my only birthday memory be of the emergency room! So we went ahead with our plans to go out to eat to my favorite restaurant.

Joe had bought me a Dairy Queen chocolate extreme blizzard cake so we had that for dessert when we got home, and then I opened my gifts, which included a CD I'd been wanting by one of my favorite music groups (Plumb).

When I started listening to the music, I was amazed that it was exactly what I needed, as I continued to be emotional about my experience the next day, too. It seemed that every song matched perfectly what I was feeling for my baby, so I started reading the lyrics and realized that the lead singer had written the entire album right after having her first baby and while pregnant with her second! It couldn't have been a more perfect time for me to hear the music. I highly recommend this album (Blink) for any new mother!

Of course when you're pregnant emotions are magnified (as I talked about during the Omaha shooting) but this "foot deal" was also a big deal because I had my first experience with my "maternal instinct." Even after I'd left the hospital and everything was said & done, all I could think about was "did I do the right thing for my son?" Ever since I saw him on the ultrasound, it has put me on a completely different level of pregnancy. I have such a HUGE urge to protect him and love him. Who cares about me and my ailments--he's who I'm living for now! He's so innocent and I'm the only one right now who can make decisions for him. I know I'll make mistakes, but the thought of any harm coming his way makes tears immediately come to my eyes.

Before, I always worried that I was still too selfish to have a baby or that after he was born I'd rethink my decision to ever have any at all. I've always pictured myself with children, but at the same time felt awkward and uncomfortable around most babies/kids. I really only babysat one child (on just a few occasions) when I was in high school and, as I said in my "Finding Out We Were Having A Baby" blog, have never really had any around me.

But, since the ultrasound and this hospital experience three days later, I am not worried about being a good mother because I could already care less about anything in my life aside from my son. He is the most important thing and nothing else in this world seems to matter or compare anymore. My feelings for him are unlike anything I've ever experienced. . .and I've realized the answers on "how to be a mother" are already within me.

I never would have been able to imagine all of these extraordinary emotions prior to becoming pregnant, but now I understand the expression, "I wouldn't trade it for the world." It really seems like this is what life's all about and I would be missing SO MUCH without him! I haven't even held him in my arms or formally met him, and yet I feel as if my life has been completed in a way that I didn't even realize needed to be! Nothing has ever felt more right or natural than this. Being a mother to my son really is what I'm supposed to do!

It's amazing you can live twenty-eight years and think you've experienced every emotion, but then realize there are a ton more you didn't even know existed--but are wonderful! It used to be that the "bad things" about parenting would freak me out or make me want to run the other way, but now nothing I see or hear really seems so bad. At the end of the day, I'm going to have this person in my life for the rest of my life (hopefully)--what's better than that?

On my 28th birthday I also became aware for the first time of how many things there are going to be in the future that are going to be spontaneous choices for me to make regarding my son. It's so much different when something like this happens to just you, opposed to when you are pregnant and someone else's life is in your hands. Maybe that was the point to this "freak incident." Here I go my entire life never having to go to the hospital for an injury--until I'm pregnant! But for myself, I'm more likely to just do whatever the doctor says and not really worry. With my son, I have to look at all sides and weigh all of my options.

For example, I had my mom's voice in my head telling me that shots are bad (I explain in my next post), while the doctors were telling me "if you want to protect your baby, you must get this shot."

Since I didn't really have time to research tetanus shots during the time I was at the hospital, I could only pray and go with my gut instinct, which was to say "no" to the x-ray, but go ahead with the shot. Joe feels I made the right decision, as he later researched this subject on the internet and read that 14% of all babies who die each year, die from tetanus. There is nothing doctors can really do if a fetus is infected; at that time it is too late.

Also, if a pregnant woman receives a shot, her baby is protected for the next five years--which means my son won't have to get one as an infant. That sounds a lot more reassuring because at that time the shot would be going directly to him rather than through me.

Joe's research also confirmed what the doctors said as far as the foot being the most likely injury to result in tetanus, and that this vaccine is not like others in that it should be avoided during pregnancy. There haven't been any reports of damage by getting it--but there have been by not having it.

I chose not to get the flu shot (which most pregnant women get), because I've never had a bad case of the flu and the only person I'm usually around is Joe, so at least I'll only have one shot during this pregnancy rather than two. Once again I used my instinct to not get the flu shot during this particular pregnancy, and so I felt that decision was okay--just as the one I made to get the tetanus shot. All mothers have to do what their heart tells them--not anyone else, whether it be doctors, family, friends, etc.

Since then, I haven't worried about my wound getting infected--and now, over a week later, I can hardly tell there was ever glass in my foot at all. The puncture is so small, it's healed very well. I am also glad I went to the hospital because I know that I did absolutely everything I could. I would have beaten myself up if I had just allowed Joe to get the glass out of my foot and then cleaned up the blood but had an infection later on. (By the way, thankfully all of the blood cleaned up easily. Good thing I was on the vinyl and not carpet!)

I don't think it's a coincidence that this happened just a couple of weeks after the Omaha shooting. It's in the same "category" (traumatic situations we can't control) so I think there's a lesson that I'm supposed to learn. I realize that in my life, until now, I've shied away from topics that scared me and/or aren't black and white. Rather than form an opinion I've trusted that others knew more than me and so I let them direct my path.

That behavior ended on my birthday.

I owe it to my son to start facing my fears, trusting myself, and being confident in my choices. That means taking more time to educate myself on issues that affect my son and me, even if my findings turn out in disagreement from my doctor or family or friends.

I believe it will benefit my son--teaching him to be healthy and trust himself, rather than be a robot in our society. It will also cut down on worrying from me, because how can I worry when I'm at peace with not controlling life or what happens to us? The only thing I can control is how I handle uncomfortable situations. Whether I become overwhelmed and anxiety-ridden (which, with parenting that usually leads to being overprotective) or whether I let go of fear, and trust that I can handle and get through life's obstacles and make good decisions (which I have proof I have done in my past, so I need to be confident in my history). Then I can't have regrets--even if I make the wrong choice, I'll know I did what was right at the time.

It's a lesson I'm glad to learn, as I see how it could have already benefited me in my past with things before I was ever pregnant! But now is a good time because whatever negative things happen in the future with my son, I can stay grounded and will not "lose it."

It's time to start taking control of things like my labor and figure out where I stand on controversial subjects like vaccines, etc. Because even though it's scary to think about, bad things are going to happen to those who I love, and I'm also going to have to make more spontaneous decisions that could affect myself and/or son. I can't avoid that, but if I know where my head is, then I can at least be relaxed and at peace--which is the best I can hope for.