My name is Jennifer Walsh, I’m twenty-nine years old, and the phone call that changed everything came at two o’clock on a Tuesday morning when I was twelve weeks pregnant and bleeding so heavily I thought I might die before help arrived. The cramping had woken me first—sharp, vicious pains that felt like my body was tearing itself apart from the inside. Then came the blood, not the light spotting my doctor had warned might happen in early pregnancy, but a hemorrhage that soaked through everything in minutes and left me shaking on the bathroom floor with my phone clutched in one hand and terror closing around my throat like a fist.
My husband Derek was in Boston for a critical client presentation, three hundred miles away. My eighteen-month-old twins, Mason and Madison, were sleeping peacefully in their cribs down the hall, oblivious to the fact that their mother was losing the baby we’d been so excited to give them as a sibling. I called my OB’s emergency line with trembling fingers, trying to keep my voice steady so I wouldn’t wake the babies.
“Jennifer, you need to get to the hospital immediately,” Dr. Chin said, her voice calm but urgent in that way medical professionals have when they’re trying not to panic you while making it clear the situation is serious. “This level of bleeding at twelve weeks requires immediate intervention.
Can someone drive you?”
“My husband’s out of town,” I managed, watching more blood pool on the tile floor beneath me. “I’ll call my parents.”
“Make it fast. And if the bleeding increases at all, call 911.
Don’t wait.”
I hung up and dialed my mother, counting the rings—one, two, three, four, five, six—before she finally answered, her voice thick with sleep and irritation. “Jennifer, it’s two in the morning. What’s wrong?”
“Mom, I’m bleeding badly.
I’m pregnant—was pregnant—and I need to get to the hospital right now. Can you come watch the twins? They’re asleep.
You just need to be here when they wake up.”
There was a pause, a long pause where I could hear my father asking what was going on in the background, his voice gruff with interrupted sleep. “Bleeding?” Dad’s voice came through clearly now. “Are you sure it’s serious?
You know how you tend to catastrophize medical things.”
I looked down at my blood-soaked pajamas, at my hands literally covered in blood, at the puddle spreading across the bathroom floor, and something inside me went very still and very cold. “Mom, I’m losing the baby. I need emergency surgery.
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