Picking up our birth story from where we left off:
Leaving the NICU, I went back up to the Labor/Delivery area, and caught up with Kelly in the recovery room. She was coming out of the anesthesia, and was fairly coherent, but still groggy. She was starting to feel the hurt some, and the nursing staff was in the process of getting her morphine drip regulator set up and attached. I told her I loved her, and set about explaining what had happened with Davis. I also told her that we were going to have to come up with a name for our little one, now that he was here!
Dr. Vines approached us, and after checking in on Kel, asked me if she had ever had her uterus x-rayed. I responded with an I-don’t-know, but Kelly shook her head with an emphatic “no.” Dr. Vines proceeded to explain that when a procedure of this nature happens as fast as it has to, they do not have time to count all of the instruments used beforehand. So, by policy and law, they have to account for all items after the surgery, and this includes x-raying the patient in the appropriate area, to ensure nothing was left inside that should not have been.
The interesting discovery was that Kelly’s uterus isn’t normal; she has a condition called uterus didelphus, and her uterus is essentially heart-shaped, with two “horns.” Dr. Vines concluded that the reason Davis came early was that he was growing in one of the horns and the bottom portion of the uterus, and had run out of room. He couldn’t utilize the other horn of the uterus; Dr. Vines wasn’t sure if the other horn was viable or not, but it certainly explains a lot regarding the pregnancy difficulties Kelly has gone through the past few years. Kelly would remember this conversation later, and ask if she had been dreaming when Dr. Vines said she “had two uteruses.”
Kelly was going to be in recovery for a while, and they were busy with Davis down in the NICU, so I decided it was time for dinner. Our friend and neighbor, Wendy, had stuck around, thankfully, and took me to Chipolte, just across from the hospital. After dinner, Wendy dropped me off and headed for home, and I went back to see Kelly in recovery.
Posted by retrophisch at August 25, 2003 12:21 PM