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The Bachelor alum Krystal Nielson shared her harrowing birth story after facing “unexpected complications” when welcoming her second baby with husband Miles Bowles.
In a lengthy post via Instagram on Wednesday, December 3, Nielson, 38, said that the arrival of her son, Rowan, last month was “the most traumatic experience” she had ever endured.
Nielson, who appeared on season 22 of The Bachelor in 2018 and season 5 of Bachelor in Paradise later that year, detailed how she and her son “stared death in the face” during delivery.
She said she first went to the hospital on November 14 “for a scheduled induction due to an umbilical vein varix,” which was the same condition she experienced during her pregnancy with daughter, Andara, now 4. According to the National Institutes of Health, it is a rare pathology that leads to an enlargement 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 the process along. She soon noticed a double rainbow outside of her window and teared up. “In that moment,” she wrote, “it felt like heaven itself leaned in and said, ‘I got you.”
But things quickly took a turn when Rowan got “stuck low under [Nielson’s] pelvic bone” — making a vaginal delivery impossible. Soon, doctors discovered that Nielson’s uterus had ruptured.
“Within seconds, a full code team burst in and rushed me to the OR for an emergency C-section — awake,” Nielson detailed, noting that it took 10 minutes for health professionals to safely pull Rowan from her womb “while my body was pulled and maneuvered with such force that Miles had to brace my shoulders and hold me down as I cried out in pain.”
Rowan’s shoulder had protruded through a tear in her uterus, making it “extremely difficult to remove him.” Doctors weren’t sure if her son had been “without oxygen long enough to cause brain damage” so he was immediately taken away.
She wrote, “Rowan swallowed a large amount of blood during the rupture and was rushed to the NICU before I ever 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 later told us that if we hadn’t already been in the hospital and gotten surgery that fast, one or both of us would have not made it.”
Nielson underwent surgery to repair her uterus, which was “shredded, falling apart, and refusing stitches.” Luckily, the hospital’s top uterine oncologist was nearby and 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.
“Since we’ve been planning on a 3rd 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 met her son for the first time when he was two days old and finally got to hold him on day four when his body was “rewarmed and cleared of seizures and brain damage.”
The family left the NICU after six days in the hospital and went home to big sister Andara.
“We stared death in the face and were handed life — a raw, trembling, breathtaking life,” Nielson wrote. “A double rainbow in the chaos. A world-class surgeon ten minutes away. Modern medicine that refused to quit. Thousands of your prayers. Miracle upon miracle upon miracle.”
Nielson said that, from now on, on Rowan’s birthday, she and Bowles will “lower ourselves into ice-cold water together. We will remember what 92.3 F felt like when the world hung in the balance.”
She and Rowan are doing well and “healing at home.”
