Awesome delivery, terrible recovery

I was 37 weeks pregnant with twins when I suddenly swelled up and started seeing spots. I called my doctor and she told me to come to the hospital to check me for pre-eclampsia. The test came back showing high protein levels and my blood pressure was also elevated - I was pre-eclamptic. I had to stay overnight at the hospital because the next morning they scheduled a c-section since both of my babies were breached.

The next morning I woke up and started getting ready for the surgery. The anesthesiologist came in my room to talk to me about the spinal, which I was very nervous for. My husband and myself put on our operating room gear and they wheeled me down to the OR. The spinal went in perfectly, I could hardly feel it.The spinal worked perfectly. No complications there. The surgeon began to cut into me and I couldn't feel a thing, other than some tugging and pulling. At 8:03 AM, my first daughter, Elizabeth was born. At 8:04, Annabelle was out. Both of them scored nines on the APGAR test. SO perfect and healthy! Everything went so quickly and smoothly. One of the nurses said that was the easiest c-section she ever witnessed.

 After they stitched me up, they brought me right up to the maternity ward. I had the surgery on a Sunday, and in my small-town hospital the recovery unit is not staffed on the weekend. However, they had assigned a nurse on the maternity ward to keep a close eye on me during the recovery period. She didn't...

After the babies were cleaned up, weighed, tested, etc., they were brought into my room so I could hold them and try feeding them. They gave me Annabelle to feed first because her blood sugar was low. I began breastfeeding, and before long I started to feel nauseous. I tried to fight it off, but I soon had to hand Annabelle to my husband because I was about to throw up. The nausea didn't go away so the nurses gave me some Zofran. I took Zofran during my pregnancy and it worked wonderfully, but it did not work for this nausea. After a bit, I was started to feel a tiny bit better, so they brought in Elizabeth for me to try to feed her. As with Annabelle, shortly after I started nursing I began to feel very nauseous and had to hand her over so I could throw up. 

At this point, my MIL and husband say I turned white as a sheet. My MIL asked the nurse when the last time my blood pressure had been taken. It had been a couple hours, even though the nurse assigned to me was supposed to be doing it every 15 minutes. The nurse assigned to my babies took my blood pressure and it was 70/40. When the nurse saw this, she looked under my sheet to find the bed and my gown covered in blood. I was hemorrhaging and quickly losing a lot of blood.  They were surprised I was still conscious.  The nurse told my husband and MIL to leave the room, and she called in nurses from 2 different wards to come to my room to help. They paged my doctor, who was not at the hospital at the time, and while we were waiting for her, the nurses were mashing on my abdomen (which was all bloated with blood) to get it all out. When my doctor arrived, she promptly shoved her hand into my uterus to get the clots out and try to stop the hemorrhaging. Meanwhile, the nurses were still pounding down on my stomach. The spinal had worn off at this point so I could feel everything. It was the worst pain I've ever been in. This whole process took about a half hour and during that time my family and friends were out in the waiting room thinking they might lose me. I lost over a gallon of blood and and had to have a blood transfusion. It was a close call!

After that, I began recovering nicely. And the most important thing is that my girls were, and still are, very healthy.