I awoke with a start this morning. Bad dream!
She's in the tub. I was delivering her placenta. She was wailing, thrashing, crying out. In pain? shock? Her placenta came fragmented and chunky with trailing membranes. I made a mental note to watch for symptoms of retained pieces. CB was with me at this birth. Was I primary or still a student? I don't know.
She was continuing to wail and was completely out of her head. I wondered if she had torn and was feeling pain from that. She grabbed a portion of her broken, floating placenta and began to bite it. Not in the way of consuming, but in the way of biting a bullet, or a leather strap, still screaming and crying through her clenched teeth. I could tell she didn't know what she was doing, but she was gnoshing on her bloody placenta nonetheless. CB was frantically trying to get it out her mouth, rinse the blood from her chin, her chest. It was quite gruesome looking. I thought, "Well, maybe that'll help keep her from hemorrhaging" though there wasn't an abnormal amount of blood presenting.
I tried to get her out of the tub. She was still wailing, crying...totally not present. I had to grab her face and make her look at me. I yelled at her, "Stay here!" "You're safe." "I've got you." "You're alright". She appeared to gather herself after that and I was able to get her out of the tub and onward toward the bed. Before we reached the bed, I was literally carrying her. Like a man carries a women in those ridiculous romance novels, those stupid Ten-Cent Nasties that my mother reads. Clearly I was the hero. (Oh brother!)
Except, some hero! Once I placed her on the bed, she seized. There she lies, having seizures and I stand there not knowing what to do. I fumble around trying to place her in a shock position, get a chux pad under her bottom, make a mental note that she's not hemorraging, and still not knowing what to do for her.
She comes to, somewhat. Enough to place a pillow over her head to block out the bright overhead light shining in her eyes. I think, "Well, at least she's got the where-with-all to know that there's a light shining in her eyes. I wonder if she'd like some orange juice?" Huh???
After that I wake up, sweating. I laid in my bed thinking of this whacko dream, wondering why I didn't know what to do for her. Then I started to run through the scenario again, this time awake, asking myself..."What would you do?"
Though I know it was only a dream, and often they are totally whacked and irrational, it still causes me great concern that I don't know exactly what to do in this scenario. It should be second nature! I doubt that a glass of OJ would've helped. She was seizing, for Pete's sake! She was definitely in shock, so would the Shock Drink of cayenne, honey and water have helped? How do you get anyone to take that when they are already seizing? She wasn't hemorrhaging so an IV wouldn't be necessary, would it? What led up to it anyway? Was she mentally unstable? Was she overly traumatized by something? Why was she so out of her head? And, WHERE WAS THE BABY?
I'm thankful that the next classes I'm taking are the Prenatal Complications and Complications in Birth and Postpartum. And I pray I have NO MORE dreams like this. Sheesh!! Makes me think I need a shot of something besides creamer in my coffee this morning.
