This story is from Kate, who bravely wanted to share her story about her experience of having a uterine inversion.
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I had an induced labour at 41 weeks 6 days. After an uneventful pregnancy, my daughter just didn’t want to budge! My contractions started the night before I was booked to be induced but they still went ahead with process to get things moving. I had a long labour and wasn’t taken to the delivery suite until early evening, it was then I decided I could take no more pain and requested an epidural, which I then was given, so a little rest, calm, before the storm! then
My daughter’s heart rate then slowed down and I had to try and get her out as soon as possible, so I started pushing and she was out. I don’t remember how long it took and then she was placed on my chest for all of a few seconds before being taken off me and I had no idea what was wrong. At that time I was given the injection to help the placenta along….. it was then that I heard something was wrong with Jessica’s breathing.
Before I could even ask what was wrong the crash team were called, the midwife had gone to pull the placenta out but it was still firmly attached so that out came my uterus, inside out, I had huge blood loss, a complete uterine inversion! I had a form waved in front of me to sign to consent to hysterectomy and I was looking at my husband in complete terror.
I was wheeled into the theatre with a nurse on a chair, between my legs, holding my uterus in my body and massaging my tummy to try and keep it in place, this failed and a surgeon was called to help she came and inserted a Bakri Ballon and by this time I had lost 5 litres of blood. It was requested I stay in the theatre for 20 minutes but the surgeon came back to find my womb had collapsed again, so a laparotomy was performed and my uterus replaced that way, I was awake for the entire procedure and remembered a lot. I had a total of 8 litre blood loss so needed a full blood transfusion. All this while my daughter’s lung had collapsed she was in SCBU and I didn’t get to see or hold her for 3 days which was awful.
There is probably more I will remember now I’ve gone through it but that is all I can write down for now.
I was in complete shock for the first few months of her life, I found it very hard to do most things, I had terrible flashbacks of being in the operating theatre and panic attacks. I had and have good support from family and friends but it’s not easy to talk to them about it much especially now after 4 years but as I said I’ve had a little boy since and the placenta was stuck again but managed better this time but obviously was a very stressful pregnancy and labour.
