At the beginning of 2005, my husband
and I decided we were ready to add a
baby to our household, but we never
dreamed what we would have to ordeal
in order to have her. I began taking
fertility drugs in February and became
pregnant during my first ovulation.
Our baby was supposed to be due
December 27. I have two blood
clotting disorders that put my
pregnancy at high risk and I began
taking heparin shots immediately. On
May 8, I began to bleed. The trip to
the ER determined that it was only an
implantation bleed. Everything went
well for a month, until June 7 when I
began bleeding again. This trip to
the ER showed no known cause for the
bleeding but the baby’s heart rate and
growth were normal. I was sent home
to rest for a couple days. After the
11th, I didn’t experience any more
bleeding and on August 9 we found out
we were expecting a girl (just what we
wanted). Our daughter, Sheryl, became
very active the next week, increasing
our expectations that the rest of my
pregnancy would go smoothly. On
August 19, my husband and I attended a
Relay for Life Cancer Walk in memory
of his son who had died earlier in the
year from liver cancer. During the
evening and overnight, I began
experiencing mild uncomfortableness
that I simply associated with being on
my feet for an extended period and the
lack of sleep. When we returned home
from the walk, we took a nap to rest
up for the rest of the day. Around 1
p.m., I woke up and thought I was
wetting the bed and rushed to the
bathroom. I realized that I could not
stop the flow and noticed a gush of
blood. I ran into the bedroom and
told my husband that I thought my
water broke. I only thought, this
cannot be happening to us! We cannot
lose two children in the same year! I
called the hospital as my husband
drove me and explained that I was only
22 weeks 4 days pregnant and I was
sure my water broke.
As they took me to the
maternity floor a nurse handed me a
test strip to check the acidity of my
discharge. Nobody really said
anything to me as they came into my
room to hook me up to monitors and IV
fluids, but I overheard a nurse
talking that the PH definitely showed
that I lost amniotic fluid. I was
wheeled to the ultrasound room and the
ultrasound showed no amniotic fluid.
They estimated Sheryl weighed exactly
a pound. When I returned to the
maternity room, the doctor informed me
that they were going to administer
antibiotics, steroids, and medicine to
keep me from contracting (which I
hadn’t been doing at that point). If
I did not deliver my baby that night,
they were going to have me transferred
to a hospital with a Level III NICU in
St. Louis, almost 2 hours away. On
Sunday morning, I was transferred to
St. Louis where they monitored me and
performed another ultrasound. A
neonatal nurse came in to talk to us
and told us all the gory details with
absolutely no hope. The doctor who
saw me there told me they would
release me on Monday since my baby was
not viable if I were to deliver her
and that I should explore my options
of terminating my pregnancy when I
returned home.
I saw my OB the day after I
returned home and contacted a
different hospital in St. Louis to
provide care for the rest of my
pregnancy. This maternal-fetal
medicine specialist was wonderful and
gave us so much more hope than anyone
else. She still told us the negative
but was much more hopeful since I had
already made it one week since my
water broke. She instructed me to
return to the hospital for admission
anytime after 24 weeks. On September
16, at 25 weeks 3 days, I was admitted
to a different hospital in St. Louis.
The time passed well, but I missed my
family that could only come to see me
on the weekends.
At 12:30 a.m. on October 13,
contractions began showing on our
monitor. The nurses brought me
medication to stop contractions but it
did not work. At 4 a.m., I called my
husband and had him time my
contractions. When we realized they
were lasting for a minute and a half
and were a minute apart, I called the
nurse and Sean left from home. Sean
arrived at 6 a.m. and I began
preparations for Sheryl’s birth. The
epidural only worked halfway (I was
only numb on one side). Because I
made it past 28 weeks, I had a vaginal
delivery and Sean was able to cut the
cord. At 12:39 p.m., I delivered a 2
pound 15 ounce, 16 ½-inch long baby
girl that we named Sheryl LeeAnne.
The neonatoligist and nurses worked on
Sheryl and that first cry was a huge
sigh of relief for us. They briefly
brought her to me as a nurse pumped
her oxygen then they whisked her away
to the NICU. Before going to my
recovery room, we went to the NICU
(along with my mom and sister) to see
where our baby was and how she was
doing.
The next couple days were a
blur of oxygen tanks, nitrous oxide,
blood pressure medicine, blood
transfusion, ultrasounds and x-rays.
Sheryl’s oxygen was never set higher
than 40 breaths per minute. On
Sunday, we held our daughter for the
first time. Sheryl came off her
ventilator on Monday and was put on a
CPAP. The CPAP was changed to a nasal
canula on the fifth day. We spent the
next two weeks traveling back and
forth from home to the hospital as
much as possible and calling every
time we got a chance to check on her.
She did well. At two weeks, we had
her transferred to a NICU closer to
home so we could see her every day.
Sheryl progressed quickly, getting off
her nasal canula two weeks later.
Sheryl required special boots for her
feet to help correct them as her feet
turned in due to the cramped space
during the end of my pregnancy. Her
biggest problems were her feeding (she
just didn’t want to do it) and apnea
and bradycardia “spells”. Sheryl
finally came home 7 weeks after her
birth on November 31.
Since Sheryl’s been home, her
only problem has been mild acid
reflux. At her six month checkup she
weighed 15 pounds and was 24 ¾ inches
long. At six and half months, she
learned how to roll over and now at
seven and half months, she scoots on
her belly to get around. Her favorite
thing is to watch everything! She’s
so curious and so interested.
I know that not every woman
and every baby’s story of pprom is as
promising as ours, but I hope that
reading this will give you reassurance
that your baby can beat all the odds.
Do not let what the doctors tell you
discourage you from having hope.
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