What Do You Title a Story Like This?

I feel the need write this story down and get it all out there. It is graphic, emotional, scary, and long.
But I need to do this for myself. Feel free to read as much or as little of it as you want.

I would like to start this story by stating that I have always wanted three children. I consider myself a very maternal person, and for as long as I can remember have always planned to have three kids. After we had Rachel, Josh was not so sure about the Three Child Family route. We had our hands full enough as it was. We decided to leave it in the air for the time being and make a more concrete decision when she was a little older.
Then we found out when Rachel was only 5 months old that I was pregnant with our third child. I had not started cycling yet, and we hadn't even had much opportunity, but nonetheless, we were surprised with another pregnancy. There is a less than 2% chance of this happening when you are exclusively breastfeeding during the first six months, as I was. So, at first we were shocked and didn't know what the heck we were going to do with two kids 13 months (or less) apart, never mind three under the age of 3.5. But eventually we started seeing the positives, and were happy that this new little person was going to complete our family. We figured this baby was in the top 2%, it must be pretty special and be given to us for a reason. Almost eerily, this was my fourth pregnancy in as many years, and this baby was due right at the exact same time as our first baby, that I lost.
A few days after we had confirmed the pregnancy I began bleeding. It was reminiscent of when I miscarried the first baby, and we trucked off to the hospital right away. Thankfully, we found a little bean on the ultrasound about six weeks along and with a heartbeat! Hurray! The chance of miscarrying after a heartbeat has been established drops down to only 3%, apparently.
I had about two to three weeks of morning sickness, but then it started tapering off. I was a little concerned because this was exactly as it had happened with my first pregnancy. I told myself not to worry - it was probably just a boy this time ;), and that I should be thankful I didn't feel too sick while trying to care for the girls. I was, however, really stressed out about the fact that my milk supply was plummeting and Rachel was not getting enough to eat. She was already going to have enough issues being the middle child and not getting to be the 'baby' for long, so I felt this was really unfair to her on top of everything else.

Fast forward a few weeks.

Wednesday of this past week I had a large, nearly unmanageable bout of contractions/ cramps that required me to lay down and breathe through. I then passed some blood. I called Josh to come home from work and watch the girls while I got in the tub. I stayed there for about 1.5 hours, but not a lot more happened. I didn't want to go to the hospital unless it was dire. If I was miscarrying, I wanted to do it at home and be part of it (as opposed to going to the hospital and being put out for a D&C - the surgery they perform to clear out the uterus after a fetus has passed.) I called the midwife and she suggested going to the hospital, but I seemed okay, and stayed home. (I have a friend who would have bleeds like this with her first pregnancy due to a low-lying placenta, but she came out with a lovely little girl from it, so I was still holding onto a shred of hope.) We did decide to go into emerge around 10 that night when my mom could come and stay with the girls. The ER doctor couldn't find anything of note (ie fetus or heartbeat) on their portable ultrasound machine, and said we should come back in the morning for a proper ultrasound when the technicians and radiologist would be around. I was hoping that everything was still okay, but my mommy radar was telling me otherwise.

Thursday morning I went in for the ultrasound while Josh stayed home with the girls. The technician and the radiologist told me the baby had stopped developing at 8w 2d - right around when I had stopped feeling so sick - and that they couldn't find a heartbeat. I should have been measuring 11 - 12 weeks by this point, so I was upset, but had been mentally prepared for this kind of news. The radiologist also said something else "looked like a subchorionic hematoma", and that I would likely start to miscarry later that day. I went home and although Josh had an important meeting he wanted to go to, he stayed home from work for the rest of the day to help with the girls. I was still holding onto a shred of hope that this was somehow all a terrible mistake, and that they had messed up on the ultrasound (as has happened before). But, a friend who knew about the situation came over to drop off a treat for me just after 4pm, which was unfortunately right when I felt it coming on. I excused myself as she left and passed a large gush of blood in the tub again. (I had chosen the tub over the toilet because with the first baby we lost I didn't know better/ think it through and everything was just flushed. That felt pretty disrespectful to me, in hindsight. This time I wanted to see the fetus and honour it properly, especially as I had just seen its little centimetre long body on the ultrasound a few hours earlier.) However, I didn't last long in the tub before I had lost too much blood and passed out. I was able to yell to Josh just before I lost consciousness that I was "not okay!". He called 911, and since their dispatch is only a few blocks from our house, they arrived promptly. Poor Laura was so scared - she didn't understand why our house was suddenly swarming with uptight paramedics and fire fighters. Josh said he put her in her room, and she just sat in the corner quiet and scared. I hope she isn't scarred for life from this. Luckily our beautiful neighbours saw all the commotion and came over to take the girls for awhile. The paramedics carried me out to the ambulance and gave me an IV right away. I was rushed to the ER (also only a few blocks from our house), and seemed to stabilize somewhat. I had regained consciousness before we left but my blood pressure was quite low. I waited in the ER for a little while, as the bleeding had slowed. A little while later it started up again, and I began to feel quite awful. It was then that they decided I needed a D&C. As I mentioned previously, this was not my first choice route in dealing with this. Also, my faith and trust in our small town hospital is not great, and if I did require a D&C, I would have much preferred it to be at the hospital we regularly use, with the surgeons I knew and trusted. Alas, there was no time for that.
An obstetrician I had never met before came in to talk to me, and said we would be doing a D&C. I made my wishes known to her about the fetus not just being discarded. She looked at me like I had two heads, but told me she would have a look through the tissue to try to find it.
After what was supposed to be a 10-minute procedure of removing all pregnancy tissue from my uterus, I awoke in a dark room. Josh was there, and my mom. I glanced at a clock and it was after 1am. I was in a LOT of pain, and my mouth and throat had never been so dry in my life. I could barely breathe because my tongue was just a solid mass in my mouth. I desperately needed water, but my squeaks and pleas were ignored. They did at one point tell me I could not have any water for fear of me vomiting. And why the hell was I in so much pain?! I didn't remember my D&C hurting so much the first time. Through my fog, I realized the nurses had also been asking to check "my incision". After that registered in my brain, I was furious! How dare this OB go in through my c-section scar again! There was absolutely no need for her to do that with a routine D&C. I now have had it opened three times, and if there was any hope of me ever having a natural birth again - she pretty much just shot it down to zero. I was livid. Josh and my mom had gone, they said something about relieving the neighbour who was at home with the girls. It's all kind of a blur to me. I remember waking up about every half an hour through the rest of the night, begging for pain relief and something to quench my parched throat and mouth. As the night dragged on, the nurses eventually let me have some ice chips, so long as I ate them slowly. I was being given morphine every hour, but it was not holding my pain that long, and I was extremely uncomfortable by the time I could have another dose.

In the morning Josh came in to visit me and to have our briefing with the surgeon. This is her tale of what happened:
        We began what was only supposed to be a 10-minute procedure, but as we were vacuuming the tissue out of the uterus, we pulled loose a piece of placenta and your blood pressure dropped and your heart rate suddenly went through the roof. We then spent the next five hours trying to figure out where you were bleeding from and how we could stop it. We checked if we had somehow perhaps poked a hole in your previous incision, but after checking that and still finding nothing, we thought opening you up through the incision to have a better look and try to find where the bleeding was coming from was the best choice. However, at this point, you were losing a lot of blood, and your blood pressure was fatally low - we ended up giving you all of the donor O negative reserves we had here. We had police rush extra blood from the hospital in the next city over, and also from a hospital in a city about three hours from here. You took 8 units of blood (and the anesthetist said he was pretty sure I lost all of my own blood - so the entirety of the blood in my body right now is other people's. Thanks people. :) Plus, when all was said and done, I had been given over 12L of saline.) The general surgeon and I had to stop the surgery several times and just manually hold your arteries closed while the anesthetist gave you more blood. After checking over every inch of your uterus, we finally determined that the source of bleeding was coming from somewhere near your cervix - below where the main arteries come into the uterus, below the previous incision, etc. So, the only choice we had was to do a hysterectomy.

- "Wait, what??? Are you serious???" I began to cry, and glanced at Josh, who was crying too. -

I was honestly worried you would otherwise die, and I didn't want to leave your two beautiful girls at home without a mother. We had come out of surgery at a few points to update Josh, as clearly it was taking much longer than expected. Finally around 1am we finished up. I'm so sorry.

I didn't even know what to make of all this. I was so angry and confused. I am only 27 - I was not done with my uterus yet! How the hell am I barren??? Now I can never carry another child. How dare she do this to me, and without my consent!! I felt so violated. Some random stranger, who I was not even comfortable with had just gone into my body and taken one of my most precious organs. How did this even happen?? Who even knew the risk of miscarriage could end so badly?! I suppose in the grand scheme of things, not waking up at all and leaving my children motherless would be the worse option. The surgeon did mention that she left my Fallopian tubes and ovaries, so I still have all of my eggs, and if we really wanted another child that surrogacy would be an option.

I am now being monitored in the ICU (though doing much better). I did end up receiving a ninth unit of donor blood yesterday because my hemoglobin was still quite low.
Everything is still so surreal right now, and I'm still hoping I wake from this terrible dream.*sob*