It was 2 a.m. I started with little cramps. It was six days before my due date and my doctor didn't think I needed to go to the hospital, but she gave me the choice and I said yes. I waited three hours but the cramping was there so my husband and my mother took me to the hospital.

I got checked in with 3 centimeters dilation (5:30 a.m.). They broke my waters, gave me Pitocin and an epidural. I slept for a couple of hours and by noon I was ready to push.

My doctor came and I pushed. My baby boy was born nice and easy at 12:49 p.m. (in March 2006). The nightmare started right after when the placenta wasn't coming out. My doctor then pulled it out, inverting my uterus. She did not know what was going on. I was bleeding to death and the feel of the inverted uterus made her confused.

In a matter of minutes I had about five or six doctors and 10 nurses around me plugging IVs, taking blood pressure, etc., etc. I started to have difficulty breathing and have pressure on my chest. With the help of a sonogram they realized my uterus had inverted so they pushed it back in place. I had no pain medication, and I was in horrible pain.

I wasn't feeling well at all. I have lost 60 percent of my blood and it was hard to keep consciousness. They gave me a blood transfusion and just in time when my mother, mother-in-law and father-in-law came to visit me I developed a reaction to the blood: shaking uncontrollably and with a high fever. They had to ask them to leave. I felt really cold and was shaking like crazy.

They then put like a bubble around me and with a tube they inflated me with hot air so I wasn't cold and gave me antibiotics through IVs. I had so many things hooked to my both arms I could not move.

I recovered and then I got another transfusion. By the next day around 10 a.m. my doctor came and said I was good enough to go to the normal rooms.

My body was so full of water that my face looked like a balloon; my fingers were like hotdogs, my legs, my arms – I was like a monster. I couldn't walk and was so weak I could not hold my baby.

I was so tired and depressed I just wanted to cry and cry. Why did that happen to me?

Now, looking at my baby, it is just the memory of a horrible experience. It was so traumatic that the birth of my first baby became a bad memory. After being at home, I recovered.

Now, two months after, I came back to the hospital to thank the doctors that took care of me. I have finally made peace with what happened to me. I love my little boy so much that anything I went through is nothing compared to his beautiful smile; it erases all bad memories.