This past week has been emotionally one of the hardest I can remember even having in my life. My very dear and special friend finally went into labor (ten days overdue – and we expected her to be early so it felt very overdue!), and we had her adorable toddler stay with us while she was in labor. Unfortunately, it was anything but a normal or predictable labor.
She had an extremely rare complication known as an amniotic fluid embolism, which is fatal in the large majority of cases. She had an emergency cesarean and was in surgery for several hours, as she was bleeding for hours without any stop (due to the embolism), and was continually given blood transfusions (she lost the equivalent of all of her blood twice). By truly a miracle, she made it through, thanks to the prayers of many, many people, and the wonderful staff who all ‘happened’ to be in the right place at the right time.
I don’t know if it was good or bad that I realized something was wrong early on, but it was a horrible feeling to have an increasingly strong sense that something was seriously wrong and not know why I had that feeling. I tried to intellectually tell myself that nothing could be wrong and I was just imagining things, but it didn’t help. I finally called her husband after an hour and a half (before that we had just spoken briefly to make arrangements for me to pick up his daughter, and I had no idea what stage of labor she was in) and apologized for bothering him, but told him that I was really worried and just wanted to find out what was happening. I’m not an anxious kind of person, but I was hoping that he would tell me I had been worried for nothing and the baby was born and everyone was fine. That’s when I heard she had been in surgery for over an hour and was having a lot of bleeding. Having a good amount of knowledge and experience with childbirth as an educator and doula, I immediately realized this was way out of the norm for reasonable complications and it seriously scared me. When an hour and a half after that the bleeding still hadn’t stopped, it was beyond frightening.
My kids realized by my tone of voice when I spoke to him the first time that something was very wrong – one of them later said that my voice sounded flat – and they all started praying for her. That day, even before I knew what had actually technically happened and how bad it was, I felt the situation was very tenuous. Literally, like someone’s life was hanging in the balance. And it really bothered me the entire day that I felt so emotionally dead – I kept asking myself, “What’s the matter with you? Your very close friend is in this terrible situation and you can’t even shed a tear?”
It wasn’t until later in the day when I heard that she had stabilized and was in critical condition and in the intensive care unit that I finally cried. And cried and cried. And since then I’ve been crying every day several times a day when I think about it. I read something yesterday that said that when a person isn’t ready to deal with an emotion, they don’t feel it, and that’s exactly how it was for me in those first hours. The possibility of a tragic outcome was so horrible that I just couldn’t feel anything.
So while I’ve had lots of thoughts on many things to share with all of you (some connected to this, some not), this has been foremost in my mind, something that I think about most of my waking hours. I’ve been too emotional about it all to even think of writing anything. At this point, I’m just grateful beyond words that she will be okay, and the baby is healthy – it’s like she won a high stakes lottery, as the statistics for both mother and baby in this situation are very poor. Most don’t make it, and if the mother does make it, brain damage is a result in most cases. Life is very precious, and times like these are a real reminder of that.
Avivah
