By Debbie Graham, Gold Coast QLD Australia
PROM at 16 weeksDelivery at 16 weeks.
Story added: 2002-10-31

After five years of infertility and one miscarriage at 8 weeks my husband Jeff and I finally concieved on our first try of IVF we found out at 7 weeks on my birthday that we were expecting twins, we were over the moon. At 5 weeks I had a very small amount of spotting and was sent for a blood test and my beta came up great so were were told it was probably just implantation spotting. Everything went well until ten weeks when one night I was lying in bed and I felt something warm running down my leg, I jumped up and to my horror the bed was covered in blood, we rushed to the ER and I was admitted to hospital, and ultrasound showed that a tiny corner of the placenta had come away and thats what caused the bleed, the babies were doing fine and moving around like crazy we were so happy that they were alright after a three day hospital stay I was sent home with instructions to take it easy. One day when I was 16 weeks I had this pulling pain around my cervix, I didnt take much notice as I just thought that everything was streatching but about 10 minutes later I had another then another, thats when I started to get worried, I went to the toilet and when I sat down I felt something slide down my vagina, I panicked, I thought that it was the baby but as it turned out it was the bag of waters. I called my husband and we rushed back to the hospital which luckily is just around the corner anyway when I sat in the car water went everywhere, the membranes had ruptured. When we arrived at the ER they sent me for an ultrasound which showed that baby A had no fluid left. I was admitted and my OB called, when he arrived the first thing he said was its not good news, he was so upset, he went on to explain to me how I was going to loose Baby A as he was very low down sitting against my cervix in a breech position, he told me there was still a chance for baby B as her waters were fine, we were then told we could induce both if we wanted to, we said no way. About 7 that night I started to go into labour which was horrible, I would not take any pain killers as baby B was still alright and I didnt want to risk hurting her. Our son Joel Mathew Graham was born at 9pm on Thursday September 12th 2002. After Joel was born the second baby still seemed to be doing ok I was put on very high doses of IV antibiotics and told I would be in hospital until she was born, which was OK with me I would have done anything to keep her safe. The next afternoon I started getting horrendous back pain, I thought it was just from lying in bed all day. My doctor came back and thats when my whole world shattered he told me I was in labour again. This time the labour lasted 12 hours and even with pethadine the pain was unbearable. The worst part of the whole thing was that our precious baby was still alive we were watching her on the ultrasound machine, It was like a nightmare knowing that the minute she was born she would die. Our precious little girl Emma Louise Graham was born at 4am on Saturday the 14th of September 2002. We are still trying to come to terms with the fact that our miricle babies are angels now. We treasure the photos we have of them and we commissioned a portrait of them which has pride of place in our lounge room. We are starting IVF agian in January and are praying that God will bless us with an earth angel this time. Our wonderful doctor believes that a blood clot formed behind the placenta after we had the bleed at 10weeks and thats what caused the PROM.