By Jessyca, Knoxville,TN US
PROM at 24 weeks + 1 days. Delivery at 33 weeks + 4 days.
Story added: 2014-04-28

Prom story I was 40 years old when I got pregnant with my first child. After several attempts, we had success with an IUI and a progesterone boost. I also needed to take progesterone to get my levels up from weeks 4-11. I had no morning sickness and no early problems with the pregnancy at all. On the Wednesday of week 24 I went to my doctor and she said I was the only normal patient she had seen all day. I awoke at 2:00 AM the following Saturday morning to a wet feeling and got up to use the bathroom. On my way I felt a gush of fluid leaking all over the floor. We went to the hospital after calling the doctor. We arrived about 2:15 AM and was put into a triage room. They did two PH tests with a swab to see if the fluid was amniotic fluid and both times it came back negative. The nurse called the doctor and they said it was probably just urine, although it did not smell like urine. The doctor (from the phone) recommended that we go home and come into the office on Monday. These conversations took quite a while and the entire time, I was leaking fluid. This concerned the nurse so she called the doctor back and they decided to keep me there until the doctor’s rounds at 7:00 in the morning. About every 30 minutes while I was waiting I would feel a gush of fluid coming out. They did not put me on the monitor until around 6:00 AM to check heart rate and contractions. The heart rate was high, but no contractions were recorded. They decided to put me on antibiotics and inserted an IV around the same time since there was so much fluid coming out they now knew it was not just urine. They did a third swab and it came back with traces of amniotic fluid. The doctor arrived at 7:30 and the ultrasound confirmed that it was indeed PROM and the baby was breech. I was told I needed to switch hospitals since the one I was in did not deliver babies prior to 32 weeks. My doctor said that after PROM labor normally starts within 48 hours but typically you cannot go longer than ten days. At the new hospital the perinatologist on call came in and told us the same thing about labor. I was kept on the antibiotic IV and given steroid shots. I never had any contractions. A neonatologist came by and gave us a low down of what to expect if our daughter was born at 24 weeks. She said we could expect her to be on a ventilator until her due date as the most hopeful option. Everyone was very encouraging and the perinatologist told us that as a best case scenario we could possibly hold out until 34 weeks as the max amount of time that we could hope for. We started praying for the 34 week mark immediately. They wanted me to stay in the hospital until delivery so they could check for infection. As soon as infection occurred they would deliver the baby immediately. I was taken off the IV after the first 24 hours and given oral antibiotics for five days total. In our first ultrasound to determine weight she only weighed 1 lb 9 oz with only 2 cm of fluid. She was a complete breech and my cervix was not dilated at all. They moved me from labor and delivery to the antipartum area after the first 24 hours and that is where I stayed. We were so happy to make it 48 hours, then a week, then ten days! By then we really did think we could make it to the 34 week mark. The baby’s heart rate was monitored three times per day and I got ultrasounds three times a week to determine the BPP (biophysical profile). They took my temperature and blood pressure every four hours to check for infection. The fluid levels went from less than 1cm to 6cm during my stay, but averaged about 5cm. She was always doing practice breathing and everything else looked good except the fluid levels. Besides praying constantly, another thing I think helped was drinking a ton of water. I drank at least a gallon of water per day to help keep her building up the fluid levels. I had one doctor that told me I could walk around in the halls some when I wanted so my muscles would not atrophy too much. I did not lay in bed the entire time, but I did not over do it. I leaked the entire time. Sometimes it went from clear to pink and every once in a while it would turn red. That seemed to be after I felt lots of movement from the baby. Twice I had a greenish discharge that freaked me out. They thought it was the baby pooping and not to worry about it since it came and went quickly and my temperature was not high. I also cleaned the hospital room constantly with disinfecting wipes. Hospitals are not really very clean at all, so I made sure to keep tons of wipes on hand and make sure that I kept the room spotless. We also had a countdown calendar that my husband made so that we could track the progress. It was great to wake up every morning and know that we were another day closer to a healthier baby. The baby was ‘weighed’ every two weeks. Her rate of growth was not going up like it should so at about 30 weeks I started drinking three Ensures per day to help with weight gain. I had to prod the doctors to let me do that. They did not think that it was going to work, but I believe it really helped. At week 30 I was given another round of steroid shots. At week 33, we nailed down the doctors to give us a definite delivery date. We set the tentative date for exactly 34 weeks. Four days prior I started feeling short pains during the day that I thought was just gas. They did not happen regularly and were not all that bad. They also never showed up on the monitoring that I was doing that day. That evening, I mentioned it to the nurse and when she monitored me she told me to mark with a small device she gave me when the pains were occurring. She moved the monitor around many times and finally we figured out that they were contractions. We ended up delivering by C-section the next morning. Our little girl was born at 4lbs 9oz. Her APGAR scores were 8/9. She had a tiny bit of a collapsed lung so they put her on a NCPAP. That corrected itself the next day so she was only on that for two days. She went to room air only and did great. She was only given antibiotics the first day. Her veins were not great so they took her off of the IV pretty quickly and switched to feeding her through a nasal tube. She was fed through a tube in her nose for most feedings the first week. I pumped milk to give her which was a little tough, but well worth it once the milk started coming in. She needed to go under the bili lights after she was there for about four days, but was only under them for about 24 hours total. The hardest part for her was eating. She started taking a bottle of breast milk on the third day. She did well at first, but struggled through most feedings. We were only allowed to give her two bottles per day at first. We kept pushing to do more and also to nurse. Once I started the nursing, they basically let us do feedings whenever we were able. They all said that once she started doing well it would go really fast after that. It was true. One day it just clicked and they took out her tube and the next day she came home. She was in the NICU exactly 3 weeks. She came home at 5lbs 7oz. She nursed great from then on and is still doing amazingly well. We got three shots to ‘prevent’ RSV because she was born in October at the beginning of cold and flu season. Now she is a healthy and happy 7 month old child. This site was a wonderful for me while I was in the hospital. I had great doctors and nurses that were not negative at all. After about 32 weeks I asked our doctors if they thought we would make it and neither thought we would ever get that far. They never let it show though. Just know that is it possible to keep an upbeat outlook even in the scariest of times. I kept a positive attitude the entire time and knew that no matter what God was going to do what was best for our family. My husband was wonderful and made sure that I did not have to eat yucky hospital food while also dealing with his job, the dog and everything else with the household. My friends and family were a great blessing during this time also. It seemed like forever while I was living it, but looking back it really feels like just a blink in time and was totally worth it to have our beautiful girl.