I haven't written her birth story yet, but I wanted to share what a miracle my Lennon is. Turns out that her very large, healthy placenta (huge, weighing 2 lbs 7 oz) had something very rare called a velamentous insertion AND vasa previa. This is where instead of the umbilical cord being inserted into the placenta, the veins pass through the membranes first. Basically, these veins (mine had 3 HUGE veins that ran all the way across the membrane sac) are totally unprotected so they could easily be broken anytime during pregnancy or birth, or when the membrane ruptures. The vasa previa makes it even more dangerous because the veins run through the bottom of the membranes, or all the way across or something like that. According to the stats my midwife looked up and gave me, she said it's rare and occurs 1 in 3000 (but more rare to have them both, I believe) and it has a 75% mortality rate for baby. If one of the veins were to be broken, she would bleed out and die within seconds. Not even an emergency cesarean could ever have saved her. It's a 100% mortality if the vein ruptures (and does so 75% of the time).
I'm still researching it but if anyone's interested (I'd never heard of this and it's kind of fascinating) this is the first info I found: http://www.vasaprevia.org/vasaprevia/velamentous.htm
And these are the veins that ran through my membranes here:
You can see where the cord insertion (the whiter part) went into the membranes instead of the placenta.
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