By Bess Vanrenen
It was a Friday, six days after the birth of my first child, Marcel, and I was bleeding. Almost every nurse, doctor, and aid who had come into my hospital room told me that while postpartum bleeding was normal, I should tell them if I filled a pad in under an hour or passed a clot larger than an egg. After Marcel and I were discharged from the hospital, I kept a running list in my head of symptoms I should look out for in him and in me. We had already dealt with weight gain issues in him and had bought formula to supplement my breast milk, and six days later, I thought we were beyond the intensity of the postpartum period. Then I started bleeding. The kind of bleeding they tell you about. Though I hadn’t filled a pad in under an hour, it was a heavy flow. Pacing our tightly woven living room rug, I called the advice line at Kaiser, and the nurse who answered the phone ran the all-too-familiar questions by me. No, I hadn’t filled a pad in under an hour and no, I hadn’t passed a clot larger than an egg. So far, my situation was within the normal range.
An hour or two later, I sat on the toilet changing my pad yet again when I felt something substantial slip out of me. Fear coursed through my body, and I jumped up from the toilet. I knew what it was—a blood clot significantly larger than an egg—but I had to be sure. I could only manage a quick peek in the toilet. There, I saw what looked like a baseball-sized clot—impossibly large, red, and viscous. I called out to Jared, my husband, “We have to go to the emergency room. Now.” Continue Reading…