The Bachelor alum Krystal Nielson shared her painful birth story after facing ‘unexpected complications’ while welcoming her second baby with her husband Miles Bowles.
In a lengthy post via Instagram on Wednesday, December 3, Nielson, 38, said the arrival of her son, Rowan, last month was the “most traumatic experience” she has ever had.
Nielson, who appeared in season 22 of The Bachelor in 2018 and season 5 of Bachelor in Paradise later that year, she explained how she and her son “stared death in the face” during childbirth.
She said she first went to the hospital on Nov. 14 “for a planned induction due to an umbilical vein varicose,” the same problem she experienced during her pregnancy with her daughter, Andara, now 4. National Institutes of Healthit is a rare pathology that causes hypertrophy of the umbilical vein.
After 33 hours, Nielson’s labor was not progressing and she was given an epidural so doctors could break her water and speed up the process. She soon noticed a double rainbow outside her window and cried. “In that moment,” she wrote, “it was as if the sky itself leaned down and said, ‘I got you.’
But things quickly changed when Rowan found himself ‘stuck at the bottom’ [Nielson’s] pelvic bone” – making a vaginal birth impossible. Soon, doctors discovered that Nielson’s uterus had ruptured.
“Within seconds, a full code team burst in and took me to the operating room for an emergency C-section – awake,” Nielson detailed, noting that it took medical professionals 10 minutes to safely remove Rowan from her womb “while my body was pulled and maneuvered with such force that Miles had to support my shoulders and hold me down while I screamed in pain.”
Rowan’s shoulder was protruding from a tear in her uterus, making it “extremely difficult to remove.” Doctors didn’t know if her son had been “without oxygen long enough to cause brain damage,” so they were taken away immediately.
She wrote: “Rowan swallowed a large amount of blood during the rupture and was rushed to the NICU before he even saw his face. »
Baby Rowan after delivery.
Courtesy of Krystal Nielson/Instagram“Not being able to see him, touch him, or even know if he would survive those first hours was a pain I can’t put into words,” she shared, adding, “The doctors told us later that if we hadn’t already been to the hospital and had surgery so quickly, one or both of us wouldn’t have made it.”
Nielson underwent surgery to repair her uterus, which was “shredded, collapsing and refusing stitches.” Fortunately, the hospital’s best uterine oncologist was nearby and was able to perform a procedure to save her uterus – although Nielson was advised not to have more children due to the high risk of another rupture.
“As we had been planning to have a third child, this news was devastating to hear,” she shared of her and Bowles’ reaction.
Rowan spent 72 hours at 92.3 degrees Fahrenheit in therapeutic hypothermia to protect his brain. Nielson first met her son when he was two days old and was finally able to hold him on the fourth day, when his body was “warmed and cleared of convulsions and brain damage.”
The family left the NICU after six days in the hospital and went home to their big sister Andara.
“We looked death in the face and were given life – raw, trembling, breathtaking life,” Nielson wrote. “A double rainbow in chaos. A world-class surgeon ten minutes away. Modern medicine that refused to stop. Thousands of your prayers. Miracle upon miracle upon miracle.”
Nielson said that from now on, on Rowan’s birthday, she and Bowles “will dive into the freezing water together. We will remember what it felt like to be at 92.3 F when the world was on the line.”
She and Rowan are doing well and “healing at home.”
