Look Away Now

So, I was out having coffee with two local moms today, while our 4 year olds were in "ballet" class. (As far as I can tell, they run around pretending to be butterflies, or fairies, do good toes/naughty toes and call it a day.) Somehow we got to trading birth stories. I usually manage to freak people out with either a) the manual placenta removal and ensuing hemorrhage story or b) the Bell's Palsy horror. But one mom, let's call her Mary, kicked the ass of my stories. To summarise: her baby was born

-breech
-vaginally
-WITHOUT AN EPIDURAL.

And, it turned out afterwards, she wasn't fully dilated for the birth (of a 10 pound baby), her placenta wouldn't birth itself, and she had a massive hemorrhage. She actually tore her cervix. After the birth she went into surgery for 3 hours, and as she puts it, a torn cervix is not easy to repair. (As the perineum presumably is?)

At this point, I nearly excused myself to go to the ladies' room to hyperventilate. She went on to say that she lost 75% of her own blood and was given transfusions. And, I learned something new today: blood transfusions make blood go to all kinds of inappropriate places in your body, making your feel completely discombobulated. (Is discombobulated a word, or did my mom make it up? I should check on this.) Mary was unable to move or see the baby for 48 hours. I had been wondering why she wasn't breastfeeding - it would have been impossible.

The bizarre part is that a month after the birth I saw her skipping around ferrying her daughter to Montessori and so forth, weighing around 90 pounds and looking gorgeous with her long blonde hair and fashionable tracksuits. How on earth can this happen? I'd like to start a sweepstake on whether she goes for a third child - it's all the rage in Dublin these days to have three. (It used to be 6+, but that's another story.)