Harlow’s Story.

Today is a good day. Not just like any other day. Today is my youngest daughter, Harlow’s, 2nd birthday.  2 days ago, I got thinking, “Wow.  I can’t believe in 2 days my baby is going to be 2 years old.  I can’t believe its been TWO years.”  Now, I know some of you are probably thinking, “sappy mother…sad that her baby is growing up..”  And yea, that is part of it.  Though our story is also a bit of a crazy one, a “miraculous” one if you will.  You see, two years ago on this day I wasn’t sure if I would be leaving the hospital with a baby in my arms or not.  The other day I finally felt ready, ready to share my story, our story.  I knew 2 years ago, that some day I would have to share, because I know while I was going through all of my troubles – it really helped me to be able to read other people’s stories that I could relate to.  It`s taken me a while just to be able to talk about this freely – for the longest time, I couldn`t even stand it being mentioned!  I will try and keep this story as short as possible, but trust me its a bit of a long one.  If you prefer to just see the pictures at the bottom of the post you can do that too:)

The Beginning

In June of 2010, my husband and I were delighted to find out that we were expecting our second child.  Little did we know, it would not be the “happy pregnancy” that every woman dreams of.

We had decided to take a trip out to Ontario in the end of July to see my husbands extended family, a little over a 2 day drive from where we live in Saskatchewan.  Everyone was a little worried about me making the big trip, just because with my first child I was SOOO sick it was ridiculous!  Of course, I assured everyone that I would be fine.  Apparently, this pregnancy was no different than my last.  Yep, I was sick almost the entire trip – laid out on a couch at my husband’s family’s house for most of the trip.  Everyone suggested that maybe I should just fly home on a plane with my mother in law instead of driving.  But of course, being the stubborn person I was I refused, I would be fine! What’s 2 1/2 days in a car?  BIG mistake.  The entire ride home I did not keep a spec of food down..literally.  By the time we got home, I was shaking uncontrollably.

11 weeks

1 week to the day that we got home, I went to the washroom to discover blood (which anyone that has ever been pregnant I am sure will agree that it is a bit of a scary thing).  I tried to stay calm, with my first I spotted due to what I was told was “implantation bleeding”.  However this was slightly more than there was with my first child so we decided to head to the hospital just to get things checked out.

Shortly after we arrived at the hospital and were placed in the examination room – just before the doctor walked in the room, the bleeding got heavier.  I instantly looked at my husband through tears and said, “I must be having a misscarriage.”  The on call doctor (who thankfully used to be one of the labour and delivery doctors) came in and grabbed the Doppler right away.  The second she placed it on me – she found a heartbeat, and a good one (which at a 11 wks is still common to not be able to find a heartbeat.  I was so relieved!  Go home, relax and put your feet up she told me.

A few days after that, our family doctor ordered an ultrasound right away.  The ultrasound confirmed that our little peanut was a healthy, happy bouncing little bean – measuring 2 weeks ahead of our original due date!  Our “bleeding” issue had been caused by a rather large tear in the placenta, that was healing itself.  Later on in the pregnancy, I would be told that my large tear was likely due to the fact that my placenta was low lying and that I was vomiting so much on our trip.

14 weeks

A few weeks passed with no issues whatsoever.  Then one morning,  I woke up to more blood.  However, this time it was just brown blood – which upon going to the doctor I was told, “Your system is getting rid of the residual blood from your previous tear.  The only time you need to worry is if you have fresh blood.”  One evening after taking a nap I awoke to find my pants soaked in blood, rushed to the hospital once again, to be told, “Just old blood, unless you have fresh blood, don’t worry.”  I continued to bleed for another 5 weeks after that, just old blood – nothing to worry about right?

19 weeks

Each day, there was less and less blood.  I was starting to get excited.  When there was no blood at all, I started doing my daily walks again.  My doctor and my obstetrician told me, “As long as you’re not bleeding you can work and exercise.” So, I did.  One week to the day that I started walking, I went to the bathroom to find blood – not a lot of it but definitely fresh blood.  So, off to the hospital we went, yet again!  Our baby’s heartrate was fine and they could find no active bleeding while I was there – so they sent me home and told me to relax and see my doctor on Monday.  I bled all weekend (only at night) and on Monday went to see my family doctor who ordered another ultrasound for me.  The day after my ultrasound while I was out watching my Dad’s new house get moved, I felt a HUGE gush and rushed to the nearest washroom to find I was soaked in FRESH blood.  I was freaking out and told my husband that we should probably get to the hospital.  Thinking it was probably nothing, he said, “Yea if we go to the hospital, you know they’re probably just going to tell you to go home and put your feet up.”  After 15 mins of constantly gushing blood we decided to race to the hospital, yet again.  This time I was met with a much different approach.  There was a male nurse who was on.  For name sake – we will call him Mr. AWESOME.  When we showed up I was bawling and he comforted me and called the doctor right away.  The doctor who covers for my doctor when she’s not at the office, came in right away.  Finally, I thought.  Someone is taking me seriously.  They kept me overnight at the Weyburn hospital just to observe.  The next morning my family doctor came into my hospital room and explained to me that on my earlier ultrasound, my placenta was lying extremely low (which would have been nice to know considering I probably would not have been exercising at all).  She told me that the latest ultrasound showed that my placenta had migrated, to an anterior position, which was good.  Also, the former tear had completely resolved itself, but there was a hematoma (which pretty much means a pocket of blood that keeps filling up with blood) and as far as they knew I had a very small placental abruption (not a complete abruption which means immediate delivery and very high chance of fetal death).  She asked me to go on sick leave from work.  She explained that my obstetrician was also there and would be coming to see me as well.  When my obstetrician came, he did not ask, he told me I would not be going back to work unless I stopped bleeding which was unlikely.  He also told me that I would be getting steroids at 24 weeks as a precaution to develop our baby’s lungs just in case he/she were to come early – which was more than likely.  This way our baby would have a fighting chance.

I was discharged that afternoon only to have to rush to the hospital 2 days later, gushing blood once again.  This time the Weyburn hospital shined, and not in a good way.  I arrived at the hospital to a full waiting room and sat for over an hour waiting on a towel that I brought, soaking it more and more by the minute (which now that I know better, I would have demanded that I be seen or I would have headed straight to Regina).  Finally, I was brought into a private examination room again where I sat for another hour soaking the bed – and believe me I am not exaggerating ANY of this.  One of the nurses came in and laughed saying, “Hopefully this baby gets out of the breech position before you deliver!”  Seriously lady, I’m bleeding everywhere and this is the joke I get?  The doctor, who we shall name Dr. NOT AWESOME came in a short while afterwards and upon seeing me crying, snickered and demanded “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

“Because, I’m bleeding a lot and I feel like I’m going to lose my baby.” I replied.

“You’ll be fine.” He said.  “I’ll phone the Regina General and see what they want to do with you.”

That was the last I saw of Dr. NOT AWESOME.  Thankfully though, my favourite nurse (Nurse AWESOME) came in a few minutes later with the shift change  and told me – the doctor in Regina wants to see you immediately, you need to rush – don’t waste anytime just get there.

When I went to the Regina general hospital I was admitted immediately for observation.  I was still gushing blood every couple of days as per usual.  By the end of the first week I was dying to go home.  One evening, I awoke to go to the bathroom.  As I got up blood literally poured on the floor all the way to the bathroom.  I didn’t think much of it just because of my experience in Weyburn hospital, and just paged the nurse to help me clean it up.  Within minutes the nurses had me in bed and paged a doctor to come and see me.  The doctor on call came in and told me I was now on bedrest.  Shortly after the doctor left, I started feeling large amounts of pressure (which apparently was more blood gushing out) – I was then rushed to labour and delivery where I spent the night.  It seemed that my bleeding episodes were gradually getting worse each couple of days.  All of the doctors informed me that if our baby were to come at that point (I was only 20 weeks) that he/she would not be viable and I would pretty much have to watch her/him die in my arms.  I felt hopeless.  Everyday I was growing more and more depressed.  I was even looking up methods to cope with the death of a baby.  I had friends on messaging me on Facebook and texting me asking if I was ok, and most days I would just look at the text and throw my phone to the side.  I couldn’t text back.  I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

My blood counts were dropping gradually.  Everyday I was lower.  To give you a more accurate idea – they told me when you’re pregnant you’re counts are supposed to be anywhere from 130-160.  If you lost over 10 of those in one day, they are supposed to transfuse you (because it meant that you were bleeding quickly), if you get below 80 they have to transfuse you.  One day I was bleeding huge clots (like the size of a small mixing bowl), and was rushed to labour and delivery again.  That’s when I met another fabulous doctor, for namesake we’ll call her She Devil.  I know that sounds harsh, but once you hear about She Devil you’ll understand exactly why I chose to name her that for the sake of this blog post.  She Devil came in to talk with me.  Her exact words, “I want to talk to you about your options.  If you want we can induce labour now, deliver the baby and you can go home.  This will all be over for you.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking – she was just giving me options.  And, some people would have taken that route – and I don’t judge them for doing so.  I, am much more stubborn and determined.  I told her that the other doctors told me they would not take the baby unless my life was in danger.  “There’s no telling what might be wrong with this baby if you do have her.”

I told her I would take my chances.

So back I went to the mother baby unit.  A couple of days later, I bled more and more and was rushed once again to L & D.  She Devil came in once again.  She sat down with me again.  “I just want you to know that you still have the option to abort.  We could end this all right now.”

“No.” I replied once again, this time a little more angrily.

She told me that they were shipping me back to the mother baby unit, because they could do just as much for me there as they could in the L & D and that way I was in my own room instead of taking up an L & D room.   My blood counts showed that I had dropped from 104 that day all the way into the 80’s, and later that evening down to 74.  She Devil’s response to the nurses asking about what to do with such a large drop? Just monitor her, take vitals every hour.  I didn’t argue – the doctor knows best right?

The next morning my obstetrician came in early.  The first words out of his mouth were, “We need to transfuse you with 3 units of blood – if you bleed that heavily again you will go into shock and you might not come out of it!”

It finally set in how real this was.  Was the doctor from the night before trying to purposely make me lose my child so I would be out of her hair finally?  I was ticked.  The nurses and doctors I told afterwards even said if they were me they would seriously think about suing.  It’s not ok to let a patient lose 30 points of blood in one day let alone drop under 80.  Later that day, my mother and father in law came to see me before they flew to Israel (they thought of canceling their trip but we told them not to).  My father in law, George Barker (who as some of you may know used to be a minister) brought his prayer shawl for me that day and prayed.  And as he prayed he started crying.  I had never seen him cry before and this really hit me.  This was not just affecting me, I was not the only one worried over this – my family and friends were too.  As I watched the bags of blood slowly empty that day I made a vow that come hell or highwater I was going to figure what was going on myself.  The doctor’s had no answers for me (lots of times there really are no answers to why this happens, it just does), so I was just going to have to figure things out on my own.  I told my mother and father in law that by the time they came home from Israel I would already be at home.  I was determined.

I knew that it seemed that when I arrived at the hospital I started bleeding more and more every day.  Prior to that I only bled actively at night times.  One of the doctors from Weyburn suspected it could have been due to where my placenta was lying – it was causing it to pull away from the wall when I layed down.  When I layed on my left side I was in pain.  After that day, I started sleeping in a reclined position.  I know this sounds crazy.  But after almost 3 weeks of bleeding constantly the blood slowed and stopped almost completely within a week.  My blood counts started stabalizing and even started coming back up.  Another ultrasound showed that our baby (who we were finally able to find out was a girl) was measuring another week over what she was supposed to be – which was incredible considering the amount of blood loss (and no I did not have gestational diabetes), it should have been quite the opposite.  After almost an entire month in the hospital, they reluctantly agreed to let me go home after giving me a steroid shot – with the orders, “If anything like this happens again, don’t waste your time in Weyburn just get here.”  One of the nurses on my way out said, “I thought for sure you weren’t leaving without having that baby.”

I went home happily and slept in a recliner (which I would do for the remainder of my pregnancy).  After a couple of returns to Regina for more blood scares (which turned out to be just residual blood making it’s way out as baby Harlow grew), we were excited when two weeks before Christmas I was completely blood free and stayed that way right up to our delivery.  A week before I went into labour I had a severe bladder infection (which is what they think possibly caused me to go into labour early, along with the stress of the whole pregnancy).  At 35 weeks, 5 days – my husband and I headed up to Regina for dinner and a movie.  We went to the hospital after the movie (I suspected that day that my water had broken, but wasn’t sure as it wasn’t like you would expect with a huge gush of fluid lol).  We made our way to the hospital afterwards and confirmed that my membranes had indeed ruptured, but there was still lots of fluid around the baby which was good.  The doctor decided to deliver due to all the problems we had.  It was time for this baby to come out.  During the whole time I was in labour, I told my husband and family – DO NOT post ANYTHING on Facebook about this.  I didn’t want to have anyone saying an early congratulations or asking what was happening – just in case – our little girl didn’t make it.  At one point, I had one nurse come into my room and say, “You bled that much and you were still able to go home??? That’s impossible!!! This baby is just a miracle baby, she will just be such a miracle!!”

10 hours later we welcomed our little girl, Harlow Addisyn Barker, weighing in at 5lbs, 10 oz into this world.  Apparently she was in a hurry because the resident doctor was still getting his clothes on (it was pretty funny, I’m sure we traumatized him – the nurses were yelling at him because he was frozen! lol)  The obstetrician on call hadn’t even made it into the room, and the NICU who was supposed to be there waiting was also not there.  Because it took so long for everyone to get there our little girl had low sugars from getting too cold while waiting.  So she went and spent a night in the special care nursery.  When I seen her for the first time in the Special Care Nursery, I broke down immediately (I would not be the only one to break down, like I said – I didn’t realize that it was affecting my family and friends just as much as it was me).  It seemed so surreal.  She was here.  She was fine.  And she looked completely normal.Fast forward two years our little lady is a happy, healthy, brilliant little girl, getting into everything she can, pestering her sister, making life interesting..lol (Picture below is an Iphone Pic)Harlow,

We love you.  You have proven to us in more ways than one that miracle’s truly exist in this world.  Happy Birthday my beautiful

girl, Mommy and Daddy love you lots!