I have to stop watching this stuff..

Fun Daddy keeps trying to get me to stop, but I can't. I am a sucker for ER.

Even when they do storylines about traumatic births. Those of course turn me into a puddle. Probably too many of them have hit to close to home. The first one aired 11.5 years or so... during February sweeps. The mother died from complications of eclampsia. Why do I remember this one? I had just brought the Angel home from the hospital after giving birth to her 5 weeks prematurely due to me developing pre-eclampsia. Yes, I was just a series of seizures, strokes and a coma away from where that woman was. I just sat there, holding my teeny tiny baby, weeping hysterically as I watched that one. Good times...

In tonight's episode, Dr. Abby Lockhart, after suffering a trauma, developed placenta previa which ruptured and led to an emergency C-section. After the baby was delivered, Abby's uterus will not shrink back down or release the remainder of the placenta which leads to increased hemmorhaging. This results in her OB having to perform a hysterectomy.

Now this freaked me out as this basically happened to my sister. And I had to listen to her mother-in-law complain that her beloved only son had always wanted a little girl and now this would be denied him... (keep in mind my sister had just delivered THREE little boys... all good sized babies... 4 lbs., 4 lbs. 6 oz., and 6 lbs.) and she took 4 units of blood... which I believe is about half her blood volume... So this freaked me out too.

But the thing that really got to me was the depiction of the NICU. Lights turned down... check. Baby dolls in incubators... check... but then the creepy element. The low sounds of crying babies. Now if you have ever been in the NICU you would understand why this is weird. Because the only sounds in the NICU come from adults or machinery. Those babies are so sick that the are silent. And that is the creepiest part of the whole place. My Angel stood out among NICU babies.. she made noise. She fussed and complained. For that they called her "The Wild Woman". They knew she would be ok.

I hate knowing things like the premies are quiet. It is an indication of too much time (anything over about a minute) spent with the sickest of babies.

If in the coming weeks they show how they turn down the lights and shoo other parents out of a NICU when a baby is in crisis I am going to seriously loose my shit. Just letting you know.