My sweet Killian's story,
Killian was my sixth pregnancy, and my
husband and I were hoping he would be
the third baby we would be able to
bring home with us. I had two early
1st trimester miscarriages, a second
trimester loss due to pPROM at 17
weeks, and my other two living
children were both early due to pPROM
at 33 weeks in two seperate
pregnancies. Anyway, I became pregnant
4 months after the devastating loss of
our son Lincoln in June of 2006. After
his loss it was discovered that I had
a clotting disorder and lupus, which
both affected my health and my ability
to carry children. I was placed on
twice daily heparin shots and knew I
would begin bedrest at 20 weeks with a
goal of reaching 34 weeks.
At 18 weeks I began experiencing PTL
and my OB ordered bedrest from then on
out, I also started taking daily
progesterone suppositories. I spent a
week or so in the hospital for PTL off
and on from about 24 weeks. I was
placed on niphedipine (procardia) 40mg
every 4 hours. During one hospital
stay I started having chest pain and
it was determined that the procardia
was over stressing my heart in
combination with severe hemolytic
anemia, I then received three units of
blood and discontinued the
niphedipine. I also could not take
oral terbulatine since it also has
similar side effects. I was injected
with the betamethasone steriods at 24
weeks.
On April 29th, the day after my
husband's 26th birthday my water
broke. We went to L&D fully expecting
to deliver that night. I was 28w5d at
that time. I also had a slightly
elevated white count and fever.
However, they admitted and began
tocolytics to stop my labor and
planned to wait as long as possible.
We were leary of this plan at best.
With my other pPROM pregnancies (this
was my 4th case of pPROM) I always
developed chorioamnionitis and got
deathly ill, so we told them to be
very conservative and deliver at the
first sign of infection as I did not
want a 29 week baby to also have to
fight a chorio infection along with
prematurity.
The morning of the 5th day after my
water broke I knew I was beginning
labor. I was in the hospital and told
my husband to be near his phone
because I would probably call him
and tell him to get back to the
hospital. We got up and he ate his
wonderful hospital breakfast. My
mother was in town taking care of my
two older children (3 and 20m). At
9:30am I called my husband and told
him to come back and told my mother to
take the kids to daycare and hurry
down because they said they would
deliver at the first sign of
infection/labor. My other deliveries
were c-sections so this one would be
too. My white count had tripled and my
fever was back and the baby was
showing signs of distress, but the OB
was hesitant to call it "labor", and
when she finally agreed to do the
surgery it was like she was doing me
some sort of favor! The nurse that
morning also ignored me when I said I
was in labor and gave me my shot of
heparin. Then the anesthesiologist
said he couldn't do a spinal since I
had taken a blood thinner only hours
before. So I had a general.
Killian Daron Alexander was born May
2, 2007 at 29w2d weighing 3lbs 8oz and
15.5 inches long. He spent 5 weeks and
one day in the NICU as an absolute
super stud preemie! He was discharged
on my 26th birthday, June 8th. He is
now three months old and weighs almost
8 pounds! He is doing very very well,
and his big brothers just love him to
pieces!
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