S23 E2: Life Threatening Emergency

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This season contains discussions of medical negligence, birth trauma, and infant loss, which may be upsetting for some listeners. For a full content warning, sources, and resources, please visit the episode notes.
Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of myself, Broken Cycle Media, and Wondery. The podcast and any linked materials

should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice. At the time of this

episode's release, midwives Jennifer Crawford, Gina Thompson, and Caitlin Wages have not responded

to our request for comment. This season is dedicated with love to Malik.
You don't know anybody until you talk to someone. I'd had multiple high BP readings.
I had started to swell pretty severely. At this point, I had abnormal lab results.
At 36 weeks, my hemoglobin was low. My hemocrit was abnormal as well.
So all of these things were suggesting that there was something more going on than just a normal pregnancy. When you have preeclampsia, your body is beginning to deteriorate.
Your kidneys are not functioning normally. Your liver is not functioning normally.
In worst case scenario, you have seizure-like episodes. Looking back at my records, I don't understand why I wasn't referred.
Even at 36 weeks and four days, I was not referred to an OBGYN. Because my son was breech, they did refer me for what is called an ECV, which is a medical procedure that moves the baby.
So I'm scheduled for this, but also at the same time, I'm told to perform like a spinning babies exercise. Spinning babies is like a natural program or philosophy that if you do these exercises, sometimes you can naturally turn your baby over.
There's one night where I feel like my son is like jumping up and down in my womb. So I call the midwives the next day and I say, hey, I think my son turned over.
Can I come in and have my baby looked at? I think it was Elizabeth who felt around for my baby. She proclaimed after doing a manual examination, pressing down on my abdomen, things like that, that my son had turned over, that he was no longer breached and he was in the right position.
No ultrasound was done to confirm that my son had flipped over at 36 weeks. And this is important to note because of how my labor and delivery will go.
I think everything is well, all is good. At that time, I still felt like I was in good care.
I was still feeling confident in my team. My mom was reassured that I was very, very close to Baylor, a hospital that she revered and knew was top-notch.
So at 39 weeks and five days, February 1st of 2022, my water breaks at 1 a.m. Contractions ensue probably about an hour later.
So I call the on-call line for the midwives, and the on-call midwife at the time was Mariah, the CNM, and I tell them I'm going into labor. I monitor my contractions I'm told to rest up as much as I can

eat, drink, and just wait it out. I'll never forget.
I was taking a shower. It was pretty late at night and say around 1am.
And I came into the kitchen. We lived in like a loft style apartment in downtown at that time.
And Kristen's water had broke.

This wasn't completely out of the norm because we're getting closer to the due date. Now we're

going to follow the instructions that they gave her. We're going to call the hotline and report

it. And then we're going to run her a bubble bath and we're going to call our doula and we're going

to relax. And so we did all those things and that continued on into the morning.
She was starting to

feel contractions were increasing. Eventually the doula came and joined us.
We're still very happy. This is the beginning of this process that we've talked so much about.
The contractions, they start and they kind of peak and then they dissipate. They come in these like waves where they get the most intense at the top and then they kind of go back out.
That's how mine felt anyway. I have a contraction monitor and I am recording my contractions.
Probably about four hours in to my labor, I start feeling like my contractions are consistent with active labor. They're one minute long and three minutes apart consistently on the dot back to back to back.
That's when I call them. I say, hey, I think I'm in active labor.
The reason why active labor is so important is because origins will not take you in until you are at least three to four centimeters dilated and in active labor. This is the second time I'm speaking to Mariah.
Mariah says, you're a first time mom and you don't sound like you're in active labor. So I was told to take a cup of Benadryl and sleep it off.
8 a.m. rolls around and Jennifer Crawford is the midwife on call now.
She calls me and said, let's get this baby out. She said, I want you to perform a mile circuit, which is a series of different exercises that they want you to do, different positionings to kind of get things moving around.
Jennifer is the midwife on call, even though Jennifer is a student. Yes.
Which obviously, again, you did not know at the time. It never even dawned on me that Jennifer was a student midwife.
At this point, I do what Jennifer tells me to do. I'm at home.
My doula comes. I love my doula.
She's fantastic. She's hanging out with me.
At about 10 a.m., I noticed my contractions stall. They were no longer peaking.
I was getting these crampy feelings, and then they started to become inconsistent. They went from three minutes apart, one minute long to once every five minutes, once every 10 minutes, once every three minutes.
It was just very sporadic. We wait a little longer.
I noticed that my son isn't moving as much. I tell my doula this and she said, I think you should give your midwives a call.
Somewhere between 11 and noon, I give Jennifer a call. I tell her, Hey, my contractions have been stalled for a couple hours.
And I'm noticing that my son isn't moving as much as he was. And she goes, huh? Okay.
Well, why don't you come in around 4 PM, four hours after I called her? We say, okay. I look back at this now and think, wow, how crazy that I didn't see that as a red flag and that I waited that long really to go in.
I wish at the time that I'd just gone to the hospital and said, you know what, my labor's not going normally anymore. And this, I think, would go to show how trusting I was in my providers.
And how long has it been since your water broke? Water broke at 1 a.m., so 4 p.m., we're looking at 15 hours. As we get there, we're still very relaxed, and so are the people inside of the facility.
There were two people there. I remember Jen being kind of the lead and then there was somebody else.
It seemed like nothing was wrong when Kristen said that her contractions at a certain point had stopped completely and weren't making any progression. Since they weren't alarmed by that, we weren't alarmed either.
Jen was the one that was actually looking over her. She had this like handheld sonogram that was attached to her wrist and hooked up to her smartphone, which I thought was kind of strange.
And she couldn't figure out how to make it connect and how to make it work. She determined that our son was breached, which we thought there was a chance of.
Me, my doula and my husband are in the room with Jennifer and she grabs a limited ultrasound. And then she was having a lot of trouble with the device.
So she brought Elizabeth in and Elizabeth uses this limited ultrasound to confirm that my son is still transverse breech. So he's laying across side to side in my belly instead of up and down.

So he said, you know what?

We're sorry, but you're going to have to have a C-section because he's transverse and he's not compatible with vaginal delivery.

I was pretty optimistic.

I was disappointed a little bit, but I was like, I got to labor for this long.

Things just didn't work out this way.

And there was no tears or anything like

that. I was just like, we're going to have to go get a C-section and we're going to meet our son.
I was nervous about the C-section part because anybody's nervous to go under the knife. But I asked her, I said, do I need a cervical exam? And Jennifer looks at me and she goes, no, you don't need a cervical exam.
You're getting a C-section, so it doesn't matter. So she doesn't do a cervical check.
They refer me over to OBGYN, Dr. Deborah Fuller.
She works in her own private practice right across the street from Baylor. So we drive over there.
We are dealing with the front desk. I had left all of my effects at home, all of my personal stuff.
I left my phone. I left my wallet, my purse.
So we're in the office at Dr. Fuller's practice, the front desk and my husband are chatting about insurance.
They're wanting my ID and everything. Also at the same time, my mom is getting off work and she was going to take our dog.
So my husband, And he's like, okay, well, let me run home real quick. And we live in downtown Dallas.
So our home wasn't more than 10 minutes away from Dr. Fuller's office.
He runs home real quick, gives my mom the dog. During this time, I'm taken back to an exam room, me and my doula to see Dr.
Fuller. I'm told to get undressed from the waist down, which I do.
I hop on this table, I'm in stirrups, all this stuff. And Dr.
Fuller, she does an ultrasound on me and she notices he's transverse. She doesn't say anything.
And she's like, okay, I'm going to do a cervical check now. And I said, do I need a cervical check? And she kind of looks at me bizarre.
And she goes, yes, of course you need a cervical check. I need to know how dilated you are.
I need to know where the baby's position, things like that. Like there's just things that I need to know that a cervical check will tell me.
And I said, okay, that's fine. She does a cervical check and this is when all hell breaks loose.
Upon her exam, she finds that my son has a prolapse cord and prolapse extremities. Not only his umbilical cord was in my vaginal canal, so was his hand and his foot.
This is a life-threatening emergency. If we don't deliver this baby in the next few minutes, you are risking serious, serious harm and death.
She runs out of the room and yells to her nurse to get me into her car. She's on the phone with Baylor, telling them everything that they need to know about me, that we're coming right now.
I start to hyperventilate at this point. I remember the nurse getting in my face and going, you're going to be okay.
This is going to be fine. I need you to breathe.
We're going to take care of you. She sits me on this office chair and they roll me down to Dr.
Fuller's car. I'm put in the backseat of her vehicle and put on my side.
And Dr. Fuller speeds out of that parking lot like nobody's business.
And as Dr. Fuller is pulling out of the parking lot, my husband's pulling up.
And my doula's on the phone with my husband at this point, telling him what's wrong. He sees Dr.
Fuller speeding away from the office, and he follows in pursuit. And they get up to Baylor.
I just happen to pull up right as the OB is kind of peeling out of this parking garage, and I follow her. And she's not driving like normal.
She's taking an illegal turn. She's running a red light.
This is very close proximity to the hospital, but it's a big city. So it's not like you can just drive straight over there.
And this lady's driving like a bat out of hell. I'm trying to follow her.
As we get to Baylor, there is a stretcher waiting in the drive

with two nurses. And they open the door and they pull me out and they put me on the stretcher and we are running through the hospital.
I'm being asked a million questions. Do you have any allergies? Any medical conditions we should be aware of? When's your date of birth? We barge to an OR room that is filled with about a dozen people who are shouting.
Things are moving around. People are talking to each other.
You hear like ripping of plastic and things just being prepped and put on an OR table. There are many things happening to me at the same time.
My stomach is being prepped for surgery. I have a catheter inserted.
At the same time, my anesthesiologist is putting an IV into my arm. There is a NICU doctor on site, and I remember him coming into my field of vision and saying, Ma'am, my name is Dr.
Thomas, and I will be the head of your son's care when he is born. It's at this moment that I look at my nurses and I ask, am I going to be put under for this? Because I don't want to be awake for what's about to happen next.
And they say, yes, you're going to be put under. And it's right then that I have a mask put over my face and I go to sleep.
I remember Kristen calling out that she loved me, but I mean, we couldn't even really see each other. She was a few yards ahead on a stretcher as I'm pulling up in the car.
It was very cinematic. It was like watching a movie almost, except for you're in it.
This was an OR that was immediate when you got in. I imagine this would be used for car accidents and other high trauma type deals.
I didn't know this at the time, but Kristen said that when she was wheeled in there, there was probably a dozen people in there. A few of them introduced themselves, but really they just went right to putting her under and right to operating.
I had to have a nurse bring me back, but I wasn't able to actually go in there with her.

What they would let me do is I could stand outside against the wall and there was a nurse that was peering through a little square window and she was telling me what was going on. The speed in which this happened, the time that Kristen got there to the time that they actually delivered my son was less than 10 minutes.
This was an escalated type emergency. I'm sure they feared the worst based off what the doctor had told them.
In your pure fight or flight, numb, head forward kind of thing that people do as a response. After my son was born, it was at 5.37 p.m.
And the nurse looked through the window and called in to ask if I could look through the window too. And after it was given the go ahead, I was able to look in.
I'm sure they were probably making sure that my son was alive. I saw him on the table and I could see Kristen still completely, for lack of a better word, filleted open.
I could see her insides and her guts right there on the table still. Then they kind of immediately had a team that was going to take my son up to NICU.
So that's where I went, which I didn't know was kind of where they took the worst case scenarios. I remember being able to touch his hand and walking through this maze that was the hospital that we were in.
He's got a bunch of things on him, but he looks fine. Some of the first pictures I have is he's in like an infant stretcher with the glass case over it.
There's a team of nurses, and there may have been a doctor with us, but I definitely remember nurses that are obviously carrying along things that are monitoring his vitals. And then the main doctor, his name was Dr.
Thomas, ironically enough, said to me, he looks like a normal baby boy, but he is not. He has not gone through anything that is normal.
We're going to be checking him for all sorts of things. And he started listing the most serious things first, things like bleeding in the brain, brain damage due to lack of oxygen.
It seemed like the list just kept going on and on. I'll never forget.
I think they hooked him up to antibiotics immediately. They hooked him up to a feeding tube.
He had a CPAP on that was helping him breathe, things like that. I was able to stay with him while they were still doing those things.
I was kind of preoccupied with him, just thinking that I would get an update whenever there was something to learn about Kristen's condition. I trusted that Kristen was in the best care.
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Quince.com slash SWW. This next part of the story, I will be telling from a second-person point of view because I was not cognizant for anything that happens next.
My son is delivered via emergency cesarean. I receive a full classical incision to deliver my son because of how he was positioned.
He was wedged underneath my diaphragm. So the normal transverse incision that you see as a typical cesarean section was not enough to be able to pull him out.
So I received a full classical

belly button to pelvis incision to retrieve him. He had his cord wrapped around his neck twice

and he was born stunned and white. He had a low APGAR score.
They had to use a CPAP to resuscitate

him after he was born. He was taken up to high-level NICU to be

assessed for brain damage as well as infection because I had a very severe uterine infection. Dr.
Fuller is quoted to say that when she opened me up, the room smelled foul. That is how bad my uterine infection was.
They are looking at my son for signs of sepsis, brain damage, organ failure, the works. And it's during this time that my preeclampsia really shows its ugly head.
And I go into a hyper-intensive crisis. My blood pressure shoots into the 180s over 130s.
My team's afraid I'm going to stroke out on the table. I'm given drugs to counteract what is happening to my body and I'm sewn back up.
Then I don't wake up after. The medical team thought I had a clamptic type seizure or a stroke on the table.
What none of us knew was that I had this very rare condition called pseudocholine and S-race deficiency, which is a genetic deficiency that is passed down through family that makes a person unable to break down a specific type of paralytic called sexicholine. Sexicholine is typically used especially in trauma cases.
What I had was an extremely, extremely rare thing. Due to this, I woke up inside of my own body still paralyzed.
I could not move. I could not open my eyes.
It was like one of those movies where someone's in a coma and they're awake in their body and then they can't tell anybody they're there. I come to is like someone flipped on a light switch and all of a sudden I was conscious.
I realized that I couldn't breathe on my own. One of the reasons I couldn't breathe on my own is because I'd gone into respiratory failure because of the condition that I had and I was on a ventilator.
And so I was freaking out internally thinking I'm going to die. I cannot breathe.
And so I'm trying my best inside of my body to move, to do anything, to let the doctors and people around me know that I was in there and I was alive and I needed help. I could hear the doctors around me.
My eyebrows started to kind of wiggle a little bit. And then I heard other people going, she's seizing.
She's having a seizure right now. The doula was in a waiting area.
I was obviously preoccupied with Theo. And luckily things were progressing well with him.
At this point, things start to slow down. It's a few hours later and I'm talking to Kristen's mom on the phone.
Everything happened so quick and it happened in the afternoon that no one had really been able to come up and see us. They're just kind of getting updates from over the phone.
And I said something defective. Kristen is still in surgery.
And her mom, who happens to be a nurse, was like, what do you mean she's still in surgery? I was like, yeah, you know, just assume that they'll come get me when she's out, that no one's came to get me yet. She's like, Thomas, that is not normal.
That is not right. This has been three hours.
Something is wrong. You need to go find out.
That was a big turning point, realizing that not only has my son been put in grave peril, but also my wife. It was actually not long after that, that I did get called down and I did get

to meet Dr. Fuller for the first time.
I had been in her office. Obviously she had taken care of

Kristen. She was one that drove Kristen to the hospital and subsequently operated on her as well.

But this would be the first time that I would meet Dr. Fuller.
And it's now probably eight

something at night. So it's been over three hours since Theo was born.

And what did Dr. Fuller share with you about what was going on with Kristen at that point? She was very calm and basically just explained that Kristen had not woken up.
They believed that she may have had some seizures, but at this point she was still out, which was not normal. So they were transferring her now to neurological ICU to be monitored.
I got to actually walk from the OR with her on a stretcher and a team of doctors and nurses around her. And we walked through the maze of this big hospital up to a neurological ICU.
I remember her hands kind of tremoring a little bit and her eyelids trembling a little bit. I was told that she had been having seizures on and off at this point, three, four hours after Theo was born.
I remember them moving her from the stretcher to an actual hospital bed. She was just completely out.
The doctor had me come over and speak to her and I took her hand. And I remember Dr.
Fuller saying, Kristen, your honey's here. I said, Kristen, I'm here.
This is Tommy. I'm here with you.
At that point, she did kind of start to open her eyes. And some of the doctors at first were like, she's just having seizure and voluntary action.
But no, sure enough, that is actually when she started to wake up. I hear my husband, Thomas, and I hear Dr.
Fuller in my ear saying, your honey's here, Kristen. Thomas, your husband,

he's here. And I hear Thomas's voice.
When Dr. Fuller and Thomas were talking to me, and Thomas will say this, other doctors and medical professionals around him were verbally saying, she is not awake.
She's having a seizure and she cannot hear you. But I could.
I could hear them. When my husband arrived and he started talking to me and he grabbed my hand, it was like, finally, someone will be able to see me.
Someone will be able to hear me. And my body moved.
And it was upon hearing Thomas's voice that I have this visceral reaction. My entire left arm shoots across my body and grabs his hand.
I spend the next 36 hours in neurological ICU. About 14 of those hours I spent on a ventilator, unable to breathe on my own.
They monitored me for neurological damage because they had assumed that I'd still seized. And honestly, to this day, we don't know if I had a seizure or not.
And I had severe preeclampsia and had a hyperintensive crisis on the table, but I did not suffer any brain damage or organ damage. At this time, I thought that what I had gone through, that crisis, oh my God, we got to get your baby out right now.
I thought that was the mountain. What I didn't realize is that my recovery was the mountain.
When I was in ICU, I was in more pain than I had ever been in my life. Thomas authorized for the medical staff to give me nerve blockers, and even having nerve blockers and being prescribed Dilaudid, I was still in an incredible amount of pain.
Some of the first things I remember while on the ventilator is asking if I could see my son, asking if he was alive. I put my arms across my chest like you cradle a baby and I rocked my arms back and forth.
And there was one other medical staff in there at the moment and they were like, are you cold? I shook my head no and I did my arms again asking about my baby. At this point, I thought my son had died.
I was told my son was in NICU. Thomas told me that so far there wasn't any signs of damage or anything like that.
He asked if I wanted to see pictures. I shook my head no.
In my head, I was going to see my baby very soon. I didn't want to see pictures of him.
I wanted to hold him. And so after that, I fought to get out of the ICU.
I was fighting to regain mobility because it was very hard. I was in an extreme amount of pain.
I had ended up getting into an argument with my neurologist who was not convinced that I did not seize and that I was capable of being able to hold my son and have full faculties. My mom and Thomas were in the room and he was only talking to them as if I didn't exist and telling them what he thought had happened to me regardless of evidence that my genetic condition, pseudocholine and nesterase deficiency caused me not to wake up from anesthesia.
That was an extremely frustrating moment. God bless that lactation consultant because she walked in right as I was laying into this neurologist.
Honestly, that was one of the worst days of my life. Ever since I'd gotten out of surgery, I was fighting to see my son.
Understandably, because it's been what, almost 48 hours now? And I remember being jealous and I was angry that someone else was taking care of my child. Someone else was changing his diapers.
Someone else was holding him. Someone else was feeding him.
Someone else was loving on him. And I hadn't even seen him yet.
That was very hard for me. I'm very grateful for the nurses and the staff that took care of my son.
But this was my internal struggle. I struggled deeply with the situation that I was in.
I was so beside myself. I was so defeated.
And Thomas was there and he said, do you want to go see Theodore, our son? And I said, no, I don't want to go anywhere. I felt like I didn't deserve to see him even at that point.
My husband, he knew I was defeated.

I just wanted to literally crawl into a hole and die is how I felt.

He saw me deteriorating emotionally and he was like, we need to go see our son.

And I shook my head at first and he was like, come on, we'll do it together.

He helps me get into a wheelchair.

He rolls me down to NICU, which was a couple of hallways away. We went through a pretty rough spell in neurological ICU.
Kristen was on a ventilator. She was really emaciated too.
They also put her on like a magnesium drip, but I remember it just making her feel awful. I said, okay, Kristen, let's go meet Theo.
She was like, I don't know. I don't know if I can do it.
I said, Kristen, if you don't do this, you're going to regret it. I remember her meeting him.
And I have photos of when they met. And she just looks so beat down.
She's normally such a vibrant, bright person. And she has the biggest smile you've ever seen.
And that is completely absent in those photos where she met her son for the first time. It's still tough to look at.
My son was in high-level NICU, the same area where they keep preemie babies. So as I'm being wheeled down the room, I'm passing little babies that are 27 weeks old who are on ventilators and all kinds of monitors and little boxes and things like that.
It is one of the most horrific and surreal moments of my life, realizing that this is where we were and how much it changed in the past 48 hours even. And we roll up to my son who is in a bassinet.
He has a feeding tube in and is hooked up to monitors. And there is a nurse there.
She's young. She's very nice.
She helped me wheel up next to his bassinet. And me and my husband, we held his hands and he gripped my finger and I honestly didn't feel much of anything.

You hear these moments of when moms meet their children for the first time and they're filled

with love and awe and they're crying. It's a very emotional experience.
For me, I was

completely shut down and completely numb to what was happening around me. And I felt disconnected.
I looked at him and it's like, I didn't recognize that he was my son, but I went through the motions. I was like, this is what you need to be doing.
And when I was in ICU, that's all I wanted. I don't know how to explain my reaction to seeing my son, but the nurse helped me hold him and I breastfed him for the first time.
From there, my feelings for him started to resurface. A lot of it was moving through the motions at first.
I knew that this is what I was supposed to be doing. This is what I needed to be doing.
I'm so thankful to the staff at Baylor. Shout out to all the nurses and doctors who were taking care of my son and were on my case because I wanted to breastfeed my child, but because of how everything had happened to me and how traumatic my delivery was, it was unlikely that I was going to be able to breastfeed.
My nurses were in my room every couple hours helping me pump, delivering my colostrum to my son for him to be fed. The NICU team was using donor milk for my son.
They also used a little bit of formula too because they knew I wasn't really producing just yet. So they wanted to make sure there was a brand that did well with him before they sent us home to make sure that he was eating.
And five days later, after the birth of my son, I was

producing. So they wanted to make sure there was a brand that did well with him before they sent us home to make sure that he was eating.
And five days later, after the birth of my son, I was producing fully. That has everything to do with the staff at Baylor.
And I'm very grateful for that because breastfeeding for me, I think, was one of the integral parts to me really developing a deep connection with my son and bonding with him, even through that traumatic event and that disconnection at birth. And it was a way to kind of help me feel like I was doing something for him.
I was taking care of him. On the third day of February, I talked to Dr.
Fuller and she lays out what had happened, that I had severe preeclampsia and essentially I wasn't out of the woods. That moment was really hard for me.
I realized that I could still die, that I wasn't safe yet. She was very careful in how she spoke to me about origins, but she was very, very clear and she pulled my records out in front of.
And she took her pen and she circled places throughout my medical history, where she felt like I should have been referred. And one point, for example, was when I had that BP reading of 127 over 90.
It was over 20 points over my baseline, which is a sign for hypertension. She said that was the cutoff.
She said you had other things before, but this was a cutoff for you. And who was seeing you and looking over those results? Elizabeth Fuell and Jennifer Crawford.
Elizabeth was the one who took the 127 over 90 BP. And she was the one that verbally suspected that I had preeclampsia and ran a liver panel, but then said it was inconclusive.
Jennifer was there and responsible for not referring me when I had that placental abruption. I'd also, I think, had labs done under her that were out of range, such as my glucose testing and uric acid were out of range.
Both of these things suggesting that I was developing preeclampsia. Elizabeth didn't note the suspected preeclampsia when they initially ran those labs? Nope, even though she had verbalized it.
Also, Elizabeth threatened to put me on bed rest a couple weeks prior to that too. There were multiple points where both Jennifer and Elizabeth verbalized that things were not right in my pregnancy, but neither one of them ever said, I want to refer you to an OBGYN.
That never happened. planning any exciting trips this year i bet something you might not be planning

is learning the local language www.bbel.com slash truecrime. That's B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash true crime.
Babbel.com slash true crime. Hi, I'm Kristen Bell.
Carvana makes car buying easy. Isn't that right, hon? Dax? Dax? Sorry, did you know about this seven-day money-back guarantee? A week to evaluate seat comfiness, you say?

A week of terrain tests? Yeah, I can test the brake pad resistance at variable speeds. Make sure all the kids' stuff fits nicely.
Make sure our stuff fits nicely. Oh, the— Right.
Still need to buy the car. Getting ahead of ourselves here.
Buy your car with Carvana today. Kristen's recovery process actually took longer than Theo's did.
He was able to be cleared from the NICU and was able to be moved into Kristen's room where we were staying and we were all able to kind of stay there together for a few days. during the time in the hospital and during this recovery care you're talking to a lot of the

doctors and nurses and such. Did any of them speak to like their experience with origins or did they give any sort of indication that this was avoidable? ROB from the bat was very much, very blunt about her opinion on origins.
And aside from that, I don't really remember too many people coming and telling us about origins at that time. But what I do remember is the parade of doctors and nurses that would come by and make time to come to our room and say, hey, I was there when you were brought in and I want to say, I'm so happy you're here.
I remember walking around the hospital to get something to eat. This is a major hospital, right? On the floor we were on, all the nurses knew our story.
A lot of other people did too. So that really brought out that what we had gone through was not a normal complication or a normal birth by any means.
When she started feeling better, Theo was in the same room with us and we were in the hospital. That was actually really a joyous time.
We were so happy our son was alive. Seeing him sick and emaciated to seeing him become a newborn baby right in front of our eyes.
It was kind of bliss those last few days in the hospital. I remember just being so happy.
And even though she was in a lot of pain, we were kind of smiling through it. I was there for a total of five days.
And my son was in NICU for I believe four and a half days. He was either released the day of or the night before we were sent home.
When we were discharged, I remember seeing Baylor pass in the passenger window and just having this onset feeling of doom. I was terrified to be sent home with this child.
We'd almost died. This is kind of something that I'm realizing now.
I didn't realize how much danger we were in when all of this happened. And now I was being sent home with this child who was very

fragile and had just survived miraculously from something that was horrible for a newborn child to experience. And I was somehow supposed to watch over him and make sure that he was safe.
And I didn't feel like I could do that because I felt that I had failed him already. When we brought him home, that was kind of when things really got scary for me personally.
First week of his life, I felt like a failure as a mother and that I was incapable of making sure he was going to be safe. So in response to that, I was extremely hypervigilant.
I could not sleep. I woke often just to make sure he was breathing.
I was constantly terrified something bad was going to happen to him. Afraid that he was just going to stop breathing in his sleep.
I was terrified of SIDS. I started doing all this research and what causes SIDS.
And I remember coming across this study that suggested that possibly a placenta with abnormalities can lead to SIDS. Sudden infant death syndrome, also known as SIDS, is the unexplained death of an infant or baby.
The cause of SIDS is unknown, but it may be caused by problems in the area of an infant's brain that controls breathing and waking up from sleep. Both physical and sleep factors put an infant at risk of SIDS.
These factors vary from child to child. I knew that because I had preeclampsia that my placenta had been faulty and was deteriorated and overaged in the womb.
The fear was insurmountable. And then I had to go back to the hospital because I was still running fevers.
When I got home that night, I remember being stuck in the recliner with my baby on my chest. And I was taking oral antibiotics, but the fever didn't go down.
About a week later, I was running about 104 degree fever and went into the hospital. We called Dr.
Fuller and she told us to come in through the physician's admittance area, but that area was closed at Baylor at the time. So the next thing we did was go into the

ER and we said, hey, listen, I need to be readmitted into the hospital. I was readmitted

for an additional four days and it was because of my severe uterine infection. I was given

antibiotics for multiple days and they were concerned they would have to open me up again.

That was worst case scenario. The antibiotics were not resolving the issue at first.
They were afraid that if things had progressed, then I would have needed to have had a hysterectomy at the age of 23. And that didn't happen, but that has happened to people before.
Luckily, the antibiotics worked. I didn't have to undergo

surgery again to resolve the issue. And I did not develop sepsis or anything of that nature, but it was a very scary prospect.
I was no longer having fevers. I was feeling much better.
I was sent home, but I was monitored. They did discover what bacteria was in my uterus, and it's kind of yucky.
E. coli was what was causing my infection.

Dr. Fuller was essentially like, you had your membranes open for 15 hours and the area where

E. coli kind of lives is very close to the area where your baby comes out.

It's not unreasonable to think that some of that bacteria had just traveled and found its way into your uterus. This is my speculation, but after my membranes had broken, I took a bath and I wasn't told that I should not take a bath with broken membranes.
And I didn't realize that in doing so, I was exposing my uterus to tons of bacteria. I love Dr.
Fuller and I'm extremely grateful for what she did to save my life and my son's life. I mean, hands down, she saved our lives, but it's hard.
She was putting together puzzle pieces. She didn't completely understand why I didn't wake up after surgery and was trying to pinpoint when I had gotten preeclampsia and trying to figure out

how to resolve my raging uterine infection and also at the same time worrying and wondering if

my son was going to make it. It was absolutely a lot.
I don't know how much Origins talked to

Dr. Fuller or not.
Origins did contact me a few times after everything happened. That first

Thank you. I don't know how much Origins talked to Dr.
Fuller or not. Origins did contact me a few times after everything happened.
That first week postpartum, they did send a postpartum nurse over to assess me and the baby do a newborn check. But after I started to understand the scope of negligence that had occurred during my care, me and Thomas decided not to talk to them at all that was it but they did contact me multiple times leaving voicemails

saying that they would like to offer me a floral bath that it could be a quite healing experience

this is the funny part because at the time they were asking me if I wanted to take a bath I was

taking showers in an office chair in my apartment Thomas is just throwing water on me in the shower

Thank you. funny part because at the time they were asking me if I wanted to take a bath, I was taking showers in an office chair in my apartment.
Thomas is just throwing water on me in the shower, you know? I don't want your herbal tea bath, all right? Thanks. Part of me wonders if they wanted to get

me in just to try to make it seem like they had done nothing wrong. We just didn't respond,

honestly. Maybe we should have let them know how we were about what had happened to us, but we

Thank you. done nothing wrong.
We just didn't respond, honestly. Maybe we should have let them know how we were about what had happened to us, but we didn't want to deal with them anymore.
We just didn't. They invited her, myself, and obviously our son.
They're like, you can come take pictures in our tub whenever you're ready. And I was like, fuck that.
We don't want a bath. I hate to laugh about it, but that stands out.
Nobody came to the hospital. Nobody visited her.
Nobody sent anything. We started to kind of see their true colors and how much danger we had been in.
When we got home, it was like the tablecloth being ripped out from under us. We lived in the seventh floor of the loft while we were kind of finishing up our lease.
And we did have an elevator, thankfully. But I mean, it was an older building too.
It wasn't quiet. We're on the corner of literally Main Street.
There's people yelling at all times of night and people drag racing in the middle of the night, things that you get in the city. I had used my time away from work.
So, I had to go back to work shortly after we had gone through this process. She needed to go and stay with her mom because she needed full-time help.
For a month or two, we weren't even staying together. It was devastating for our relationship at that time.
By the time I was able to rejoin them, I felt out of place. I didn't feel like part of the family unit.
And I didn't feel like I knew how to take care of my son who had changed so much in his time staying there. I mean, of course, I was going there as much as I could.
And I was spending the nights there, probably most nights, but still. I assume you were working full time as well.
Yeah, working. And then I would drive to go spend the night at her mom's and come back early to take care of the dogs and go to work.
I just remember feeling really, really lost. And I remember even my performance at work really suffering too.
I'm just having moments where I'd be working and working and just kind of like look up and just be like, where am I? It was really rough. On top of all the new parent woes that the dad's working and then the mom is overwhelmed, we were both coming to terms with what had happened to us and the negligence and the misguided care that we had gotten.
And as we're discovering that, I mean, where is all that anger going to go? It wasn't something that united me and Kristen. It kind of formed a wedge between us.
I think a lot of it was guilt. We felt like we had picked this place that was so negligent and was doing all these things.
We were the idiots for doing this. We put our son in danger.
I truly think that's how we felt. And that guilt had a way of taking a toll on our marriage and our relationship.
Definitely for the first year, I'd say almost two years, we really, at least for me, felt that guilt upon ourselves. We still thought that this is just something that happened to us, an isolated deal.
It wasn't until much later on that we started to kind of piece these things together. I would say over the course of the next year or so, we started to unravel what had happened to us.
It was a very tough time in my life. It affected me in my work environment.
I worked restaurant industry. I was in management beforehand and I was in a sticky work environment where I felt like I needed to prove myself to be seen in a managerial role to secure my position.
After I had my son, I blamed myself for how hard I pushed myself for how much I worked. And I blamed my employment in some ways for putting that pressure on me.
I didn't want to work management after that. I didn't want to work in the restaurant industry anymore after that.
It was really, really difficult. I felt kind of anchorless with no purpose, no career, didn't know what I wanted to do anymore.
I felt like I couldn't either because my husband was a chef at a restaurant and was working like 70 hours a week. We couldn't both be working full-time management because who would take care of our son? Coming to those realizations was really hard for me.
That created a lot of resentment in me towards my husband too. I felt like I was having to give up my career so he could keep his.
It really wasn't like that, but that's how it felt at the time for me. I withdrew from my other relationships.
There was nobody I could talk to that understood what had happened to me or that could relate to what happened to me. I would tell my story to people and you could see their eyes kind of glaze over and what I was telling them go straight over their head and be like, at least you made it.
You don't even look like you had a baby, things like that. I learned just to keep it to myself and I raged within myself and I isolated, I ruminated, I lost interest in everything that I liked to do before.
I lost interest in my career. I lost interest in my friends.
My best friend, she was pregnant around the same time as I was and gave birth in May of that same year. And she had a beautiful, wonderful birth.
And I remember talking to her while she was in labor and just being so afraid, just hoping that hers would be okay. And it was, it was everything you would want a birth to be.
It went completely normally, no issues whatsoever. I was happy for her, but I was upset that I didn't get that.
That's hard too, because that's my best friend. I love her more than

anything. You can be happy for her and upset for you at the same time, but then you get to feel guilt on top of the fact that you're feeling what you're feeling, right? Oh yeah, that was real fun.
I felt guilt. I felt like I couldn't tell her how I really felt.
I was happy for her, but I was also so upset and so angry that that's not what we got. How does this happen? What was it about us that put us in that situation? It was difficult for me to hear about other people's birth stories.
People will ask you too about your birth. And I think that's off limits.
You don't ask people that stuff. I learned that through my experience too.
I was like, you do not ask people about their birth stories because you just don't know. It can be so triggering because it's such a deep and intimate thing that happens to you.
It's such an emotional, vulnerable thing that happens to you. It's not just like a chit chat, small talk kind of conversation or a question to ask somebody.
It is a great thing. It's a joyous thing.
But I felt so isolated during that time, postpartum. It was a very dark time.
Do you feel like a lot of that was from the medical trauma in addition to the life transition? I allot some of that to the medical trauma, absolutely. It's such a jarring thing to go from thinking that you're going to have this peaceful birth to what actually happened to us.
That part was traumatic and having to jump through hoops and the getting better and how sick I was afterwards. I think what was more traumatic for me was the utter betrayal and distrust that I felt.
I trusted these people with my life, with my son's life. And to find out that I had been lied to, I had been bamboozled.
I felt like I'd been conned, honestly. I mean, it makes you question everything.
Makes you question every decision that you make. Makes you wonder if you've done all your research, if you have good judgment.
You question yourself and then you begin to question everyone around you. Or at least that's how it was for me.
I began to distrust the world. So that for me was more traumatic in a lot more ways than the actual event of it all, even though that was really traumatic within itself.
I can't walk into a hospital without thinking of what happened to me. For example, my grandmother, she died of dementia this year.
And one of the last times I saw her, she was in hospital for malnutrition. She wasn't eating or drinking.
And so my grandfather took her into the hospital to be evaluated. Upon walking through that ward, smelling the saline, hearing the beeping of monitors, I began to have a visceral reaction to being in that place.
I could feel my heart starting to pound in my chest. I felt like my throat was being constricted.
And I immediately thought of what it felt like to be on the ventilator. You know, the smell of hospitals is so sharp in your nose.
And it just brought me back to being there. So there is absolutely a great deal of trauma left from my experiences in the hospital.
I had a lot of trauma stored in my body, especially in my abdomen area.

I felt like I couldn't exercise.

I felt like I couldn't do things like that. We went skiing the year after my son was born.

I nearly started crying because I didn't want to use my core to help me do the things.

And I had weakened muscles between my legs.

The tendons where your groin area is, if I put too much pressure in one way or another, those tendons would lock up or they would hurt. So that was really affecting my ability to ski.
And I had a ski instructor and she could tell that I was getting really frustrated. And she was like, hey, it's okay.
It just takes some people longer than others. And I remember getting really hot and having this visceral bodily reaction because my body was being triggered by what had happened to me medically.
And I told her I had this really traumatic thing happen to me a year ago. I'm lucky to be alive.
And that is affecting me today. It was good just to like get that off my chest.
And she was an older woman. She's like, I understand.
You take your time. We're going to do as much as you want to or don't want to do.
And she was really supportive of me, but it helped me to just say what was going on in my head. But emotionally, I was still pretty hung up.
For the most part, I had tried to forget what had happened, but it would sneak up on me. It was a dark, ugly monster that I would lock in a closet.
And when I was least expecting it, when I was alone and my thoughts were quiet, it would tap on my shoulder and say, hey, remember me? It was like PTSD. I would have intrusive thoughts.
I would have flashbacks about what had happened to me, huge feelings of anger and betrayal about what had happened, even 18 months postpartum. It took me a really long time to get emotionally well, which was the hardest part for me to get in a place where I feel like myself again.
And it wasn't like a me from before. It was whoever this new me is, the person that had been turned inside out and had all of her outsides on display.
This person who had survived this thing, who was a mother, who was also trying to deal with trauma at the same time and trying to repair her relationship with not only herself, but with her husband. When I finally started to feel like me again, though, it was like a big sigh of relief.
It was like someone had lifted these huge weights off of my shoulders. And it took a little bit at a time.
And while we were in the thick of recovering, within the first 18 months of my son's life, there were times where we were hitting rock bottom in our marriage. I was filled with postpartum rage.
I was just enraged at everything. We were two individuals who had gone through this extremely traumatic and life-altering event, just trying to recuperate, trying to heal, trying to make sense of what happened to us in our own ways.
We were not always the best people to each other. It took a lot of work.

At the end of the day, we really had to choose each other over what had happened to us. We went through a lot of counseling.
We talked about this so many times. If you don't mind me asking, when did you guys start therapy? That's a good question.
It was when we moved into our new house. so probably a little over two years.
It's really helped us get to a place where we can talk about what happened to us. And we could talk about it with more ease than we were able to before.
We communicate better now. We understand each other better now.
And in ways we're closer than we ever were before. There's more emotional intimacy there.
I think a lot of because of going through what we went through, not just surviving, but learning to live after it. This has been really important key moments for us, choosing to love each other, even when it was hard.
I appreciate all the work that he has done. Personally, I know I was not the best partner, not even a good friend during that time in my life.
It was very hard. We've gone through therapy and we're in a much better place.
If one good thing has come out of us deep diving into what happened to us, it was able to also kind of reunite us in understanding what each other went through. At a certain point, we moved out of that apartment.
We rented a house further away from the city. So it was a lot quieter and it was nice, but now we live in what most people would probably call the country.
And when we did, we found a new pediatrician. My son, I want to say he was a year and a half old.
And of course, you know, he's walking, babbling, all that stuff. And the new pediatrician is looking through his chart and he goes, oh, oh my God, you don't see a lot of ones walking around and doing what he's doing.
And what he was talking about was something called the APGAR score. APGAR is a quick test performed on a newborn at one and five minutes after birth.
The one minute score determines how well the baby tolerated the birthing process. The five minute score tells the healthcare provider how well the baby is doing outside the mother's womb.
It also helps measure how well the baby responds if resuscitation is needed right after birth. The healthcare provider examines the baby's breathing effort, heart rate, muscle tone, reflexes, and skin color.
The APGAR score is based on a total score of 1 to 10. A score of a 7, 8, or 9 is typical and is a sign that the newborn is in good health.
Any score lower than a 7 is a sign that the baby needs medical attention. The lower the score, the more help the newborn needs to adjust outside the mother's womb.

Most of the time, a low APGAR score is caused by a difficult birth, C-section, or fluid in the baby's airway. A baby with a low APGAR score may need oxygen and clearing of the airway to help with breathing, or physical stimulation to help get the heart beating at a healthy rate.
A low APGAR score does not mean a child will have serious or long-term health problems.

His immediate APGAR score when he came out was a 1.

And I think after a few minutes, it progressed to a 4.

We've received a lot of reassurance, but any medical professionals that look

at even just an overview of his records,

like, oh my God, you're so lucky to have him and have him in the form that he's in. When you have a child that's born with a low APGAR score or is deprived of oxygen during delivery, you're worried about a number of things.
My son was developmentally normal, developed words and no speech delays or anything like that. We're very lucky to be where we were at that point in time.
It was September or October, 2023. The angry monster came out of the closet while I was driving home from work and was like, hey, you remember this really awful thing that happened to you? I ruminated over that on the way home.
And I got home at like midnight. And I said, I'm going to write a review.
I sit down on my couch. I'm typing out this review.
And essentially, I tell them my story, all the places where I should have been sent away, all the places where they dropped the ball. And I told them how Jennifer was unlicensed.
At the end, I essentially said that the owners do not care. They are insincere and they deny what happened to me, even though they were not present.
They continue to lie about what had happened and deny my claims. This place is dangerous.
And if you value your life or the life of your child, go somewhere else because this place is not safe. That was essentially my review.
It's also important to note that at this point in time, this is the first time I am writing my story. This is the very first time that my story is on written record for other people, the public to view.
And that is what kept me from writing a review for so long. I could not even think about the idea of someone else reading my review or reading my story and then nitpicking it apart.
I didn't want salt to be rubbed in that open wound, but something came over me that night and I just said, I'm gonna do it. And so I wrote it.
And then after I wrote it, I started reading reviews. Me and my husband, we'd stayed up all night because we'd realized that we were not the fluke.
It was like somebody lit a fire under her. She just started diving into reviews on every site that she could find and And weeding through the positive ones,

you know, ironically enough,

it was all the positive reviews we saw

was part of what led us to Origins.

They have hundreds of positive reviews.

As she started to weed through

and find these little one stars

that were here and there,

what we were reading was absolutely horrifying.

And it was also very much akin

to what we had experienced

almost two years before. Kristen was on fire with this.
Next time on Something Was Wrong. You had this amazing picture painted in your mind that nothing's going to go wrong.
my husband, me, my photographer, the midwives, I'll go back to the birth center. I'm pretty sure I'm in active labor.
We think the baby's going to come. I'm exhausted.
I can barely push. Ashlyn, the CNM, recommends transfer.
I felt pretty safe. I really trusted them through the whole process.
And looking back, I probably shouldn't have. I started forming this group called Survivors of Origins Birth and Wellness.
So anytime anyone looked up Origins, they would also see our group, which I'd hoped would make people at least stop for a second and look and think, hmm, that's strange. I wonder what this is about.
Something Was Wrong is a Broken Cycle Media production created and produced by executive producer Tiffany Reese, associate producers Amy B. Chesler and Lily Rowe, with audio editing and music design by Becca High.
Thank you to our extended team, Lauren Barkman, our social media marketing manager, and Sarah Stewart, our graphic artist. Thank you to Marissa, Travis, and our team at WME, Wondery, Jason and Jennifer, our cybersecurity team, Darkbox Security, and my lawyer, Alan.
Thank you endlessly to every survivor who has ever trusted us with their stories. And thank you, each and every listener, for making our show possible

with your support and listenership. Special shout out to Emily Wolf for covering Gladrag's original song, You Think You, for us this season.
For more music by Emily Wolf, check out the episode notes or your favorite music streaming app. Speaking of episode notes, there every week you'll find episode-specific content warnings, sources, and resources.
Until next time, stay safe, friends. If you like Something Was Wrong, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr. Bollin, the host of Mr.
Bollin's Medical Mysteries. And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened.
And cases so baffling,

they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror

stories and mysteries, Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show.

Listen to Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app

or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.