I had a bleed at about 13 weeks but bub was fine, everything was normal with no other issues apart from the nausea until about 26 weeks. From 26 weeks I started passing clots but they couldn’t tell me why. So I would spend about 2 days in hospital after I would pass a clot (48 hours monitoring required with every blood loss) and about 3 days out before another clot would pass and I’d need to be admitted again.

Bub was fine the entire time and I felt no pain. So after about 7 weeks of this, the doctors decided I was allowed to monitor my blood loss from home. As long as I came in for check-ups every Tuesday and Thursday as well as taking photos to keep them updated. It was at 32 weeks and 4 days that we made this agreement (to save being in hospital for 2 days every week). Scans still weren’t showing where the clots were or where the blood was coming from.

On the night of the 19th November at about 10pm, I started passing blood again. I kept monitoring it as usual, but this time every hour, I’m not sure why but this time just felt different. By 2am I had pain which I had never experienced before with the bleeding. My husband rushed me to the hospital, and by the time I got there, I had blood down my legs and everywhere.

They took me straight in to monitor me. Bub was fine once again, but this time I was 2cm dilated and having contractions. The entire day of the 20th, I was monitored in the emergency department while they deliberated on whether to put me up on a ward or put me in birth suite. I wasn’t dilating any further, and the bleeding slowed. Just as they decided to put me up on the ward I passed another clot and they checked, and I was 3cm dilated, so off to birth suite I went.

In the birth suite, I continued to pass more and more blood. At one point I decided I needed to use the toilet, which is when I passed what the midwife guessed was “about a litre”. That’s when she decided to call the doctor. A doctor came in and decided it was time to break my waters and that we had to get the show on the road, and I had an epidural as soon as she broke my waters (thankfully!!)

After the epidural I got some rest for about 3 hours and in that time, I dilated to 6cm and wasn’t going any further. By this point I’d lost about 3.5 litres of blood and suddenly baby and I both went into distress (my heart started racing while hers started to drop) so they started prepping me for an emergency caesarean. All of a sudden there were doctors, paediatricians and the head of the emergency department in our suite. At this point I told them I felt the need to push and they kept telling me not to, but when they checked me all of a sudden I was 10cm dilated and I finally got the go-ahead to push (just like my body was telling me to!).

There she was!
At 4:10am on November 21st, 2019 our 1.5kg little girl was here at 33 weeks gestation. She spent 48 days in the NICU and graduated exactly on her due date, the 8th of January, 2020.

The placenta was shredded to bits. They said they’d never seen anything like it. It was sent off for testing and no results came back as to why it was the way it was or what happened during my pregnancy. So to this day we still don’t know why it happened or where the blood loss was coming from. In the end they suspected a partial placental abruption, but this wasn’t the cause of the loss during the previous weeks of blood loss occurring.

Which is what makes it so hard in deciding whether to have #2 or not. But regardless of whether or not we have anymore, our hearts are so full and content with what we have.

Maya loves to talk and sing at any chance she gets, is forever smiling and oh so affectionate!! We are so lucky and blessed to have her here! Our little miracle baby.