My Birth Story Part III: Feels Like Death

Saturday morning I woke up settling into the feeling of being a mom. Everything was good…sort of. See, my breathing was a little off. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I just assumed that I felt that way because I wasn’t use to walking around yet, so of course it would be difficult to br4eathe easy! Well, it got bad enough that I finally told the nurse excuse me, I can’t breathe. At the same time the nurses told me that there may be something wrong with Johanna’s heart, a murmur. By then I’m freaking out. It’s 10am and I’m calling Jonathan in tears. I can’t breathe and somethings wrong with the baby. By the time he makes his way to the hospital I’m on oxygen. My breathing had dropped from 99% to 70% O_o. Everything was out of whack. My blood pressure was sky high, I couldn’t breathe, they didn’t know what was wrong. Things are pretty much a blur but my oxygen level kept decreasing, only holding steady at about 77%. Finally they called a doctor in because I was gonna have to go to ICU. The doctor wanted to put some kind of tube in my neck. I.freaked.out. Not because he was about to cut into my neck, but because this fool wanted to remove the oxygen mask while he did it. I’m sorry, excuse me, but didn’t we just discuss how I can’t breathe??? You want to do what??? And then he made me lie on my side and put a plastic cover up over my face. I CAN’T BREATHE!!! WHO THINKS THIS IS A GOOD IDEA??? OMG *faints*. I nearly jumped off the table. I couldn’t. I also couldn’t believe hubby wanted to stay and watch. That lets me know that he was really afraid for my life.

Eventually they rolled me downstairs and I had all kinds of medicines pumped in me. Come to find out I was going into heart failure smh. It made zero sense. I went from being just fine to heart failure just like that. Tomika was there, but I couldn’t talk to her. All of my concentration was on trying to breathe because even with the oxygen I was still struggling. I had yet another catheter, some drips, antibiotics, blah blah blah. I almost gave up. I truly started to remove the mask from my face and just say forget it, let me die. I was so tired of trying to breathe. I’ve never had to fight to breathe before. I honestly thought to myself that Johanna would be fine because she had Jon and that was that. Then my Aunt walked to the glass window and she looked done. Immediately I felt bad. My mom was in one hospital dying and here I was in another dying. It’s then that I snapped out of it and decided I couldn’t do this to her, Jon, or Johanna.


My nurses were so concerned. My nurse from labor and delivery followed me down to the ICU and wouldn’t let me out of her site. My nurse in ICU was so concerned that as soon as his shift started the next morning he came straight to my room. I was so scared to go to sleep that night, but I finally did. By morning my vitals were looking much better and my nurse was able to take me back to L&D. He told me he never wanted to see me again and I told him the same lol. All was good…then here comes Tuesday…


I couldn’t breathe again! So here we are again with the oxygen and more tests. It was finally decided that there wasn’t a blood clot in my lungs but still more fluid so they gave me medicine to help with that. During this whole ordeal I had 3 blood transfusions. I lost so much blood during delivery that they said I’ll never be normal again, so they were just trying to get me up and going again smh.


This is what happened. My body was carrying so much amniotic fluid that my heart was working super hard. It was having a difficult time regulating my fluid and the amniotic fluid. It was pumping so hard, some of the fluid was going into my lungs along with blood (I was spitting up blood that saturday). That was super scary. They did do all the tests in the world to make sure my heart was ok, and it was in good straight and very strong. Praise Jesus for that.


By tuesday night I was able to breathe but my blood pressure was still high so I still wasn’t able to leave the hospital.


Wednesday broke my heart. I lost my mom that Wednesday. She never got the chance to hold Johanna, but thanks to my aunt she got a chance to see her via picture. It hurt that i couldn’t see her or be with her, but God has been carrying me through. I wish I was able to experience this with her, but I’m not the first person to lose their mom during a time like this, so I kinow I’ll make it through.

That Thursday Jo Jo Bean (thanks for the nickname Mare) and I were released, woohoo! Since then it’s been nothing but weird sleep schedules, bottles galore, and stinky diapers with a few smiles, giggles, and bonding thrown in. I love it! Being a mom is totally the bees knees!