Low-lying placenta but a natural delivery

Sharon, 31, tells her birth story: 'I have an 8 month old daughter Abbigail and a 26-month-old son Noah.

My birth story starts at 36 weeks when I was admitted to hospital with a heavy bleed and they discovered that I had a low lying placenta. I had to stay in for 5 days (over Xmas ) which was hard as I really wanted to spend it with my ds and dp.

There was a lot of talk about a c-section and the dangers of further bleeding; I was sent home and told if anything happens call an ambulance!

Anyway, I went for further scans to check position of the placenta and was told I could try for natural delivery (by this time I just wanted it over!). Eventually I went nine days overdue and had a membrane sweep, went into labour that evening,

When I arrived at the hospital I was examined and was 5cm dilated so I requested an epidural (just in case anything went wrong with delivery) they had just finished putting in the epidural and I had the urge to push.

My partner Matt helped turn me round on the bed and four pushes and Abbigail was born, still in her amniotic sack. Luckily she was ok, a bit shocked form the rapid delivery (5cm to fully dilated in half an hour!) She weighed a healthy 7lb 2oz.

Here's where it goes bad - delivering the placenta, it tore and I retained part of it. This led to me losing about 3.5 litres of blood and being rushed to surgery to have it manually removed (so glad I had the epidural or I would have needed a general).

We stayed in hospital for three days after her birth, I had to wait until my blood count had risen. I received three transfusions after the birth due to the amount of blood I lost. 

The problem with my placenta meant that I wasn't able to breastfeed my daughter until three hours after she was delivered, but Im glad to say we have had no problems and she's an expert at it!'

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