Part Two: The worst part of the week & how granny panties saved the day

Part two gets gross and graphic, so you might want to turn back now.

I have scared others into not having children.

You've been warned...

We were starting to get into a routine and getting used to having a baby around the house. David's mom took the week off and was helping me around the house and with taking care of Olivia. Wednesday morning David was off and I had a scheduled doctor's appointment to have my staples removed. Because of swine flu, no one under the age of 12 is allowed in the OBGYNs office, so we had already planned on taking Olivia to her Nana's before the doctors appointment. That morning Nana called and said David's brother was sick so she was going to come to our house to watch Olivia. That ended up being one of those coincidences I spoke of earlier.

My appointment went fine. I was really nervous about having the staples removed. I had heard stories from others that it was awful, but those people I decided were just drama queens. It didn't hurt at all. Anyways...the doctor checked me out and from the outside, everything looked good. She sent me on my way and told me to come back for my six week post-partum checkup.

On the way home I asked David to stop by wal-mart since there were a couple of things I wanted to pick up for Olivia. While at wal-mart, I decided to pick up a pack of what most women refer to as "granny panties." I had been wearing bikini style underwear the week before and they were hitting right at my incision. Even though I had the staples removed, I thought wearing the high waisted underwear would help it finish healing. We walked around wal-mart, got the few items we needed, and then headed home. We got back to the house and talked David's mom into letting us take her out to lunch. After sitting around for a minute, we decided on Mexican and started getting ready to head out. Though I normally always wash new underwear before I wear it, I decided to go put on the "granny panties" because the others were rubbing against my incision. So, I went and changed my underwear and at that point everything was still fine. Another one of those coincidences I was talking about.

****Warning****
***This is were the story gets gross. If you can't take gross stuff, skip this next paragraph.***

When I came back, Olivia and I were sitting on the love seat. I got up and went to get a diaper and wipe to change her before we left. When I came back to change her, I noticed my shorts were a little wet. I then said to myself "duh, I have a wipe in my hand" (why that made sense at the time I don't know). I changed her and for the first time since I had got home from the doctors, picked her up to put her in her car seat. We were getting ready to walk out the door and I told David and his mom to wait a second because something didn't feel right. My shorts were soaked by that time and I thought my incision was bleeding. I went back to our room and pulled open my shorts and underwear. My incision had opened and my insides were coming out. Most of it was fatty tissue and a bit of my small intestines. The only thing holding my insides in were the granny panties. I freaked out.

I should stop and explain for those who don't know (I didn't know), when you have a c-section, you have two incisions, on on the inside and one on the skin. So what happened was that my inside incision hadn't healed and my outside incision opened up and my insides came out.

I started screaming "oh my God, oh my God, I think we need to go to the hospital." Of course, they thought I was overreacting and David's mom (who I've mentioned is a nurse) told me to open my shorts and when she saw it she started freaking out. She works in the GI department of the hospital and looks at intestines all day, so she knew what she was seeing when she saw it. In a quick few minutes, we decided that David would drive me to the hospital I delivered at since my doctors are there. We hopped in the car and David's mom stayed with Olivia at the house. She called my doctor and explained what happened. They told her they would have a doctor there to meet me in the ER. That was the longest drive of our life it seemed like but, I was surprisingly calm most of the time. The only time I freaked out was when I called my mom. I called my mom and just started screaming "pray for me, pray for me." David had to take the phone away and explain what was going on.

We made it to the hospital and needless to say, I got rolled right back to the back. Having your insides hanging out gets you to the head of the line. My doctors came in and obviously, the only option was surgery. They rushed to get a OR ready and after being there for about 45 minutes, I was back in surgery. They opened me back up, did a good clean out my insides, checked to make sure there were no signs of infection, and sewed me back up. This time they decided to do extra sutures. They did say that the knots from the first sutures were still there and intact. That makes me believe that the "pop" I heard when I got sick after the c-section was when the sutures came undone. Yes, I was that violently sick at that time.

I stayed in the hospital for the next 48 hours. They put me on a extremely high dosage of antibiotics. They called it the triple gun. I was on those for 48 hours and back on pain medicine. It was the first time my doctor had seen this happen and her partner (who did my 2nd surgery) had only seen it once in his career. They said it ended up being blessing in disguise. Normally, they take staples out after 3 days. I had mine in for 7 and the outside incision still hadn't healed all the way. If the outside incision had healed completely, then my insides would have stayed open and it would have slowly poisoned me, making me sicker and sicker over time. If that were to happen, it would have taken longer for them to figure out what was making me sick. The doctors without saying it seemed to agree that they think when I got sick was when the sutures came undone. But unless they took me back into surgery and opened me back up, they wouldn't have known.

They treated my second surgery like a hysterectomy for recovery purposes. I was sent back up to the mother/baby wing of the hospital and we quickly requested the nurses we wanted for my stay (and reported the bad ones). I got much better care the second go round. They even gave us permission to bring Olivia up there for visits, even though children under 12 are not allowed up there due to swine flu. They also said that she could stay the night, but I told David I thought it best for her to stay at home.

The biggest worry is for infection. Like I said, they checked me, cleaned me out, and kept me on the antibiotics for 48 hours. So hopefully, I'm in the clear now. They didn't send me home on antibiotics because if you stay on that strong of antibiotics long enough, it does some major damage to your body. It was another blessing that I had decided to not breastfeed. Since I was on such a strong dosage of antibiotics, I would have to have waited weeks before it was out of my system and I could continue to feed her.

Several people have made the comment that my doctors are to blame, etc., etc. I honestly don't feel that way. It was a freak accident and I'm thankful that things turned out the way they did. I seriously have some of the best OBGYN's in our area. I do have a inside source that let's me know who to see for what in our area and she asks around to other people who have a know also. It helps to have someone who works in the medical field.

So, that's my birthing story. Needless to say, it's been a little traumatizing. I have informed the hubby that this might be the only child we have. Luckily, he only wanted one or two kids to begin with. I told Nicole the other day that the foster to adopt program is looking pretty good right now.