Crystal B.

I was 12 weeks pregnant and at a doctor’s appointment when I found out the news that there was no heartbeat anymore. I chose to wait for the miscarriage to happen naturally and 5 days later it did but with what I feel was far too much bleeding. I was dizzy and felt like I was going to pass out and my heart was beating wildly. I felt hot and then chilled and was sweating all over. I went to the ER but they didn’t do anything at all and told me it was just a “stress response” and sent me home without testing anything. Luckily the bleeding did slow down but I was weak and dizzy for a few days afterwards. Two days after the ER visit I passed a placenta which was the size of my fist and it smelled a little rotten. I thought that was just because it was old. I also remember feeling some sharp stabbing pains in my pelvic area on and off around this time and every in that area felt achy but I thought it was normal considering and didn’t think anything of it. (Sepsis and Pregnancy & Childbirth)

Two days after that I woke up and felt very cold and stayed cuddled up on the couch with a blanket feeling like I was on the verge of shivering. I complained that it was cold and my husband told me I was crazy and that it was over 75 degrees. I asked then for the thermometer and it read over 103 and that when I knew that I’d had to go to the hospital. Honestly I didn’t want to go because I had been dismissed so quickly just a few days before and I secretly wondered if it wasn’t going to be another waisted trip. I changed my pad before leaving and that’s when I noticed that the bleeding smelled like rotten meat which was clearly a bad sign.

Once at the hospital my blood pressure was incredibly low and my heart rate elevated, I was dizzy, cold, weak, and my head hurt so bad. They immediately took me seriously this time and did all the tests and set me up with IVs and antibiotics. They then sent me to a bigger hospital by ambulance because they didn’t have an ultrasound machine. It took a while to have the ambulance ready and once I got there it took more time for the ultrasound to open up. By the time I got the ultrasound I was completely and uncontrollably shaking like a leaf. It was so miserable. I was then told I had retained tissue and the doctor came in and said as soon as an operating room was open I would go in for an emergency D+C procedure. It took awhile waiting and I was scared because I had never had surgery before.

When everything was all prepped they took me to the operating room and put me under, the last thing I remember was the oxygen felt like it was burning my lungs and I was trying to make them take it off of me and then there was nothing.

When I woke up I actually felt all warm and fuzzy for a moment and I thought everything was going to be okay but then suddenly out of nowhere I had a violent shaking episode and my temperature had spiked and my blood pressure was crashing. People were rushing around me. I remember my muscles hurt so bad because they were shaking so hard but I couldn’t stop it and my hands felt so cold, my chest hurts too. I looked toward my husband briefly and I remember wanting to beg him to help me and to make it stop but I was too weak to talk. I was in and out of consciousness and my husband says it was about a half hour before I stabilized and stopped shaking. I vaguely remember being wheeled out to a recovery room but it wasn’t until a few hours later that I woke up enough to know where I was. I felt like my limbs were lead and when I moved them they felt like they were attached to my body.

Over the next three days I was in the hospital getting antibiotics and also an iron transfusion. I was sore all over and I had a bad headache and neck pain. I finally got released from the hospital and that’s when I got officially told that I had sepsis which I hadn’t known until they handed me the discharge papers. It took a while to start to feel physically better but I’m lucky that it wasn’t worse than it was. The doctor said if I had waited even a little longer I could have died.

I’m still trying to process it all and understand what happened to me. At the time none of it felt like it was real, it felt like I was just in an bad movie or a nightmare or something. I’m finding the more time passes the sadder I get about the miscarriage and the whole ordeal, maybe because it’s finally sinking in that it was all real and my baby really is gone.