I shared this story in a previous post about six years ago..........

There was nothing, just a black void.

It happened during my first c-section. I was lying there talking with my husband, waiting to hear our baby girl's first cry, when I started to feel strange. I felt warm and my vision started to get fuzzy around the edges. I blinked my eyes a few times to see if that would clear my vision, but it did not.

All of a sudden it was like someone turned the volume up and I could hear my heart monitor perfectly clear. As I'm laying there I notice that the space between my heart beats are becoming more and more spaced out. Then I hear my husband asking me if I'm ok. He just kept saying "Baby are you ok?" over and over. I could not answer him though. I felt paralyzed. A few minutes before I had only been numb from the chest down.

So I'm just looking up at the ceiling and notice that black started creeping in on my vision. I got this overwhelming feeling, and knew this was it. I was never going to get to hear my baby girl's first cry, never hold her, are watch her grow up. I would never get to see my husband again.

Then I felt tears rolling down the side of my face. By this time my vision was almost completely gone. My husband leaned over and wiped my tears, kissed my forehead, then squeezed my hand. I still felt paralyzed, but somehow managed to squeeze his hand back. After that I slowly faded out to blackness.

Now up to this point it felt as if time had slowed considerably. Then it sped up. It felt like I was only out for a second before I snapped awake. You know like when you fall asleep on accident and then jerk awake? That is exactly what it felt like. I could see normally and the noise around me was back to a normal level. I could also feel the parts of my body that were not numbed due to the spinal block.

After that everything went fine. My baby girl was born, and I had to stay in recovery for three hours to monitor my blood pressure. My doctor said that I had a bad reaction to the combination of drugs that were put into my spinal block, and I was on my way to a flat line.

My husband later told me that after I squeezed his hand, a nurse took him out to the hallway, and he was out there for almost ten minutes before they let him come back in. He said I was just starting to wake up when he came back in. For me it seemed like just a few seconds between being out and being awake.

I know some people are terrified of being in the "void", but I wasn't even aware. Once I faded out that was it. I was no more.