Hello again friends. Update from Erin this time. :) What a crazy few weeks it has been. Physically, I’m healing and feeling a little more like me each day. I’m still pale and very weak. My energy level is low which is a bit frustrating. Feeding and taking care of Kole is pretty much all I can do right now. Emotionally I have been on a bit of a roller coaster feeling great one minute and sad, depressed, and anxious the next. I always get the “baby blues” for a couple of months after I give birth, but my emotions feel even more out of control because of everything that has happened during the last week and a half.

I lay in bed at night and so many things run through my mind. What if I had hemorrhaged and passed out when I was home alone with the girls? What if we hadn’t made it to the hospital in time? So many doctors visited me in the hospital and told me how close I cut it – that if I had been an hour later… Then I think about what I put my family through – how stressed they were for a day not knowing if I was going to be ok. My mom at home fixing the girls snacks and entertaining them, acting like everything was fine, and then going into the bedroom to cry so they wouldn’t see her. She said she didn’t set Kole down the whole day. She just held him and cried on his little head. I think about Kenny and how emotional he was at the hospital just before they took me to the operating room. How scared I felt. I remember how much pain I was in after surgery. They pumped me full of pitosin during surgery to try to stop the bleeding without doing a hysterectomy and after surgery the pitosin had to run its course. I’ve never felt pain like that before. I think about all of these things laying in bed and the tears flow.

Then I think about all of the good. How after the pitosin wore off and the pain ceased I was given a blessing by Kenny and our Bishop. After, they started talking to each other at the foot of my bed and while I was listening to their familiar voices I started feeling calm for the first time. Feeling like everything would be ok. Of course the massive amounts of morphine I was being pumped full of may have also helped. :) I think about how blessed I am to have had three beautiful children – my little angels – before this happened. I think about my mom and how amazing she was during all of this. She completely took over. Took care of my kids, cleaned my house, did my laundry. Made sure the girls were happy and completely oblivious as to what was going on with their mom. She came to the hospital each evening to visit with me and bring Kole so I could hold him and feed him. She kept all of my family and friends up to date on how I was doing. She cried with me and laughed with me. I love her so much and will be forever grateful to her for all she did for me and my kids during this difficult time. Then I think of Kenny. How he didn’t leave my side for one second through all of this. He was at the hospital first thing in the morning and stayed with me all day until it was time to go home to put the kids in bed. Then he’d stay up all night with Kole, take the girls to school the next morning and then head straight back to the hospital. He has taken such good care of me. Now that I’m home he’s doing everything around the house and with the kids so that I can rest. He has even made a chart keeping track of what pills I need to take and when. I wouldn’t have made it through this without him. I love him more than words can express.

I think about how grateful I am to God that I am still here. Here with my family. Here to blow dry Ellie’s hair when she gets out of the tub. Here to feed Addison her “green yogurt” (key lime) each morning for breakfast. Here to kiss and love and cuddle my sweet little Kole. I also think about all of you. How grateful I am for friends who love and support me. I know Kenny said this before, be we really have been overwhelmed by the kindness, help, and prayers we’ve been given during this time. It means more than you’ll ever know. Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

I’m sorry. I know this post was all over the place. I have so much on my mind and it was therapeutic to write it all down. As hard as this experience has been, I’m grateful for it because it has reminded me of how precious life is. And how much I love mine.

Hi Everyone,

It’s Kenny again. Just wanted to give you another quick update about Erin. She is now home from the hospital. They let me bring her home last night. Her blood levels reflect that she has about a half a “tank” of blood so she has very little energy and is pretty pale. She will be on the couch for the next 10 days and in recovery mode for the next six to eight weeks while she heals and her body regenerates her blood levels. The good news is that the worst is definitely behind her and she is now on the mend.

She should feel well enough to post in a couple of days so this will be the last time you’ll hear from me. That said, I keep teasing Erin that maybe I should just take over this blog. Judging from the number of comments from my last post I clearly have the gift of prose. Erin seems to think that it was the content of the post that resulted in the number of comments but we all know the truth, right? :-)

On a serious note, Erin and I want to thank you for all of the flowers, dinners, phone calls, emails and comments on her blog, Twitter and Facebook. While Erin was in the the hospital I read to her several times all of the blog comments you left and each time it brought tears to her eyes. We have been truly overwhelmed by the amount of love and support that we have received during the last week. There are a lot of good people in the world and Erin’s blog friends are definitely among them. Thank you so much.

Hi everyone,

This is Kenny. Some of you have already heard that yesterday was a traumatic day for our family. We’ve been receiving lots of calls from friends who wanted to wish Erin well and who had questions about what happened so I decided to hijack Erin’s blog and let you all know what’s up.

Yesterday morning while I was downstairs I heard a scream from upstairs and ran up to our bathroom to find Erin hemorrhaging. She had Kole in her arms and handed him to me about 10 seconds before she fell on the floor and passed out. Her mom and I quickly called 911 and five minutes later about 10 paramedics were standing over Erin in our bathroom. They couldn’t stop the bleeding and Erin kept going in and out of consciousness so they ultimately threw her on a gurney and we headed to the same hospital that we had just left a week earlier when we had Kole — only this time to the emergency room.

Once we got to the emergency room the surgeon told us that she had already lost about half of the blood in her body and needed to go immediately into surgery or she would likely lose her life. As you can imagine, we were both extremely emotional learning the gravity of the situation. The doctor told us that he would try to do a simple D&C to stop the hemorrhaging but that given how quickly she was losing blood he might need to go directly to a hysterectomy if the D&C didn’t work. They then whisked her away to surgery.

After three long hours the doctor emerged from surgery and told me that the D&C hadn’t worked. They had determined that she was dangerously close to losing her life as a result of the hemorrhaging and had elected to perform the hysterectomy. The hysterectomy stopped the bleeding and, after giving her transfusions of an entire human body’s worth of blood, they had been able to stabilize her. That was the only news I needed to hear.

Erin is recovering in the hospital now. She’ll be here for the next several days and will be recovering at home for weeks after that. She can’t sit up yet and she is in a lot of pain but the worst is definitely behind her. She appreciates all of the thoughtful texts and emails she has received and all of the wonderful friends and family who always go out of their way to stand by her.

Experiences like these remind you never to take what you have — especially your health and the health of your family — for granted. The overwhelming sensation that has overcome us after having gone through the events of this weekend is complete and total gratitude.

We’re so grateful to our Heavenly Father for answering our prayers. We’re so grateful that Erin’s mom hadn’t left town yet (she was hours away from flying home) so she could be with our kids while I looked after Erin. We’re so grateful for the members of our Church and community who were so quick to reach out and offer to help. We’re so grateful that this hysterectomy didn’t happen until after we were able to have three healthy children. And I, for one, am extremely grateful that my beautiful wife is going to be around to grow old with me.

If I know my wife, she’ll be posting updates again as soon as the nurses unhook the 35 IVs and miscellaneous other tubes that would slow down her typing. She’s never been one to let a life threatening illness keep her away from a good blog post.