Pregnancy is a funny thing. I never much enjoyed being pregnant but I had no reason to dislike it. To be honest I had two very easy, low maintenance pregnancies and deliveries. Trust me-I know how lucky I am.
My third pregnancy wasn’t terrible at all, until the third trimester when I fell victim to prodromal labor, then had a retained placenta at delivery with a more difficult recovery, then-months later-trouble with my ovaries. It’s been a doozy third time around.
My precious baby is fine and has been fine thank goodness, but I’d be lying if I said some things towards the end didn’t freak me out. I had absolutely no idea what a retained placenta even was until I had one. If you are wondering, according to the American Pregnancy Association, a retained placenta happens when a woman has not expelled her placenta after 30 minutes post-delivery.
Picture this: Having been at work all day on my feet and having on and off contractions, I take myself to triage. Upon arrival I find out I am, in fact, 8 centimeters dilated with little time for an epidural. Thankfully I was rushed upstairs, got my epidural, and baby was ready to arrive within the hour, and upon “pushing”, there stood a team of 8 doctors around me. Not even kidding with that number. There were surgeons, GYNs, students, pediatricians…the whole gamut.
Well, it turns out my placenta was so out of the norm they took it for studying. It just didn’t want to leave my body! It was HUGE. The surgeons had to physically, arm was elbow-deep, remove it piece by piece. I was saying an extra prayer that I got the epidural at that time! The nurses were asking me questions about accepting blood transfusion if necessary; there was so much blood. Finally, after about an hour and a half of ripping each little piece out, one surgeon said “I *think* we got it all out.”
When I was finally able to bust out of the hospital, my recovery wasn’t as easy as my previous pregnancies either. You always hear about the postpartum recovery period-and no matter what, it definitely isn’t sunshine and unicorns. But my recovery took much longer to, well, recover. The amount of blood lost was astonishing.
Fast forward five months later, and yes, I am still in recovery mode. Having finally gotten some things back on track (at least I assume I did), I ran into another issue. I started having some dull aches on my left side of my abdomen. After (probably too much) research I believe I have found an ovarian cyst. Now, this is just me diagnosing myself based on symptom checkers and some personal discussions.
So here I am, almost six months postpartum and still trying to figure out what’s going on inside my body. I’ll be glad when it is all finally taken care of and I officially know that things are back on track, and I never would have anticipated a recovery period lasting nearly this long, but here we are. And that is why pregnancies are a funny thing.
Everyone always oohs and aahs at the little baby just born, and rightly so, but we can’t forget what the mothers have just been through and will continue to endure for the next several months.
Cheers to all you pregnant Mommas now, and anyone enduring postpartum recovery! You are all heroes!
