Where to begin. This is by far the strangest journey I've taken in my life, and I want to document it somehow. Though in some ways, I'm still hoping to wake up from the nightmare. Here's a short history.

I hadn't exactly been having my dream pregnancy. I was really excited about planning a homebirth, but things started going downhill with my unexplained bleeding. I started spotting at about 20 weeks. At first it was just every few days and only a little, but soon it was like the worst period I've ever had, complete with clots the size of quarters. Mulitple ultrasounds failed to show the source, and bed rest actually made things worse by increasing the flow and causing contractions. Then, at 25 weeks, the blood was irritating enough to rupture my membranes. At first I didn't notice. I just thought it was more blood. But an ultrasound showed my amniotic fluid level to be half what it had been the previous week. So, with all reluctance, it was one of the hardest things I've ever done to let go of my dream homebirth and check into the hospital at 26 weeks to await the birth of my baby. No one at the hospital thought I would last long, with ruptured membranes, but every check showed the baby to be doing very well. I continued to be pregnant for 3 days. My mom flew in on Thursday and I was finally able to quit worrying about my kids so much. I think my body was waiting for that. At midnight on Friday, April 4, I went into labor. Nothing I or the staff did could stop it, and at about 6 in the morning, I was told I would need a c-section. The baby was breech, the bleeding was increasing all the time, and the attending doctor was sure my placenta was abrupting. I called Kurt, who was at work by then, and he came, everyone left the room, and he gave me a blessing, and I went off to surgery. I sobbed through the whole thing, thinking I had failed to give my baby the peaceful pregnancy and birth he deserved. At 9:09 am Friday April 4, Quinn Douglas Fackrell was born, weighing 1 pound 10 ounces. He cried right away which is phenomenal for a baby born 3 months early, and he has a long road ahead of him in the NICU. We don't know what special needs he may have, and we dont know if this is our last child. I was given a low vertical incision because my uterus wasn't stretched enough for low-transverse, so no one will support a VBAC for me. And I can say with all authority that there is no comparison in the recovery from c-section and vaginal birth. Make no mistake: c-section is major surgery. It is not to be taken lightly. I have been in significant pain for more than two weeks. It's been a long time since I've felt well and capable and it's getting old.

So I'm left wondering what the hell happened and what I could have done for it. When they pulled the placenta out, there was a clot behind it almost the size of the placenta itself. So that was obviously the source of my bleeding for the last 6 weeks. But I had no risk factors for such a thing, which are usually crack addictions and the like. It just happened and no one can tell me why. But despite an environment that literally collapsed around him, I have one strong baby who never showed signs of distress. I dont really feel like he is mine yet. He lives at a hospital which is nearly an hour away. We have only been able to hold him the last couple of days, after he got a more permanent IV, although that surgery didn't go as well as expected. It shouldn't have been a surgery at all, just a procedure with narcotics to dull the pain, but apparently his veins are too small. So he needed a central IV line instead of a peripheral one. He got a bit too much anesthetic and had a scary couple of days with a blood transfusion and medication to bring his blood pressure back up. I really try not to be angry about all this and just focus on what is going well, but the fact is this whole situation sucks, massively. All I can do is pump milk for him, which I'm definitely doing, but it just feels like a token gesture. I have a hard time looking at pregnant bellies, thinking my baby should still be inside me growing big and strong so he can be born quietly and peacefully in our house. But it isn't to be.

Kurt got to hold Quinn today, after he dropped his mom off at the airport. He reports that the CPAP, which is the odd-looking contraption on Quinn's head, is gone. Now he just has tubes going to his nostrils. He had been having issues with his belly getting full of air, enough so that he couldn't eat. The CPAP was blamed for that, and so it's gone. He supposedly got to eat again tonight for the first time since yesterday morning. He needs to eat more. I've got a freezer full of milk, because I've already filled his allotted freezer space at the hospital.

I had a discussion with the nurse practitioner about consent yesterday. When we got there, the nurse told us Quinn had had an x-ray to see if there was anything besides air in his very full belly. That struck me as odd because I had thought x-rays were a big enough deal we would be asked first. But I guess I really don't have a concept of what is or isn't a big deal. Anyway, I asked to see the consent form I signed, because I was in such a haze at the time, I didn't read it carefully. Well, it turns out that doesn't make much difference. It's worded in such broad terms that it looks like anything can fit under it. "I authorize consent to examination and treatment" is as specific at it gets. So I asked whether the Hepatitis B vaccination fell under that category as well. Thankfully, no. The NP said there would be "discussion" before it was given. I didn't tell her I planned on saying no, that can wait. All in all, it was a much calmer conversation than the one I had a week ago when we got to the hospital and found Quinn was in surgery and no one told us. That really was an oversight on their part, which they fully admitted, and I admit I didn't handle it very well. I already don't deal with people well anyway. Add to that postpartum hormones, extreme pain, and emotions involved in being the mom of one tiny baby and it wasn't a pretty sight.

I'll be going down tomorrow and I'll take more pictures, now that we can see more of Quinn's face. Tomorrow is my first full day of flying solo. The church has lined people up to babysit while I go down there, so I'm not totally on my own, but I'm still recovering, and as I mentioned above, it's not going nearly as well as we had hoped it would. I haven't personally gotten Dorian and Faith up and dressed and breakfasted in more than 3 weeks. We'll see how things go.