By Darla, USA
PROM at 22 weeks + 2 days. Delivery at 22 weeks + 3 days.
Story added: 2003-05-02

My name is Darla. I never thought that I would have any problems with pregnancy, since it was so easy for us to conceive. In July of 2002 I became pregnant on our first try. 7 weeks later I found out that it was an oblighted ovum. It was devistating, but we have alot of faith and figured it happened for a reason. After our doctors approval, we tried again after 2 normal periods and BINGO! we were pregnant again. We waited until we were 12 weeks to tell anybody because of our first heartache. I had a very pleasant pregancy - a little tired, but other than that I felt great. I always told people, "I feel really good, and that almost scares me!" I always told my co-workers that my biggest fear was that something would happen while I was working and be put in the hospital for something, so I always wanted to make sure my desk was kept up. We went for our 20 week check up and our baby looked great! At the time we did not know what we were having - the baby gave us thumbs up on the u/s. It was so great because my in-laws came along with my husbands grandma - I thought how cool will that be for our child to tell people that their Great-Grandma seen them in side the womb! Well, almost a week later, about 1:30am on a monday morning, my worst nightmare came true! Literally! I had just drempt a few weeks before that, that I had the baby prematurely and it was a beautiful little girl with lots of brown hair! Well, I got up to go to the bathroom and when I returned to bed, I felt my underpants wet - I really thought it was probably my bladder. So I got back up to change my underware and look up in my week by week pregnancy book to see what it may mean. It said that it's hard to determain if it's urine or water, if it got worse to call your doctor immediatly and then I went back to bed. I laid there wondering if I should wake my husband up or if I was just jumping to conclusions. Then my underware became wet again. So I got up and woke my husband up and said - "I think something is wrong" and I started to cry. As I panicked and went to the bathroom again, water was running down my leg. My husband said to call the doctor, so I did, she said to go into the emergency room just to get checked out. We hurried and got dressed and my husband sped off. Trying to calm me down and cheer me up by saying "this is just a practice run honey - don't worry" We got to the hospital and was immedialy checked in. A young doctor came in and checked me. He said that my water had broke and I was dialated to 2cm. He said this in not good news and I'm sorry. The nurses put me on a monitor for the baby - she was doing great. The nurse even said "Baby is holding on" strong heartbeat - I though we may have a chance. My husband immietly called my sister, she came to the hospital and they called my parents and they were on their way - they both lived up north and it would take my mom 4 hours to get down (there was a bad snow storm that day)fortunalty, my dad was already in town. They took me down to do another u/s - not good, there was really no water around the baby. My husbands cousin is our doctor. She was not the doctor on call that day. We had another doctor from the practice, who was great. But my husband really wanted to talk to his cousin to be reasurred. She said that there was not a good chance that the baby would make it. We were than transferred to a high risk hospital for pregancy. My husbands cousin arranged for us to be seen by the best doctor in the field. He then told us that I was not dialated and he would have to insert, what looked like little toothpicks to dialate me. We were going to opt for the D&E, I was way to horrified to go into labor and deliver a baby that I would not be bring home! I mentally could not handle that. Well the doctor said he felt that for my health it was probably better to try and deliver by being induced instead of having the surgury. If I had not delivered by 7am the next morning (4/8/03) he would do the surgury. So they admitted me to the hospital and pumped me with IV's and put me on some morphine to calm me. All our family decided they would leave me and my husband alone and decided to go home. My husband really wanted it to just be us. But I told him, my mom really needs to stay, I think we will need her and we did! For 6 hours I was in labor. My mom and my husband sat at my bedside and counted my contractions the whole time. 2 minutes apart and they lasted 45 seconds. The nurses kept checking me - said I was not close it would still be awhile. Well at 12:00am (4/8/03) I told my mom, "the baby's coming" and at 12:20am the baby was born. My husband and I decided we did not want to know the sex. The names were going to be Joseph if a boy and Ella if a girl. We had joked during the pregancy and call baby Joella! So we decide that's what we would name the baby. They immediatly took me in for a D&C when I would not deliver the placenta. I heard them tell my mom and husband that I may need a blood transfusion since I was bleeding so bad. I came out of surgury, my thoat hurt from being intibated. I heard the nurse call in my file to release me back to my room. I heard her say "Baby girl" and I knew, I had a baby girl. I confirmed with the nurse and she said "yes". When I got back to my room at 4:30am - my husband crawled on the bed with me and I told him, "we had a baby girl" we then knew her name would be Ella Francis - My grandfather, who had died before I was born was named Francis, his birthday was April 7th. My brother-in-law handled all of Ella's funeral arrangements. I'm so glad we did not go thru with the surgury and that I delivered Ella. It gave me some feeling of being her mom and trying to do the best I could. There was no signs of infection and really no explaination of why it happened. We are anxious to try again, but terrified it will happen again. My priest asked the question to all of us "why did god do this?" If he intended on taking our little girl, why did he even let us conceive her? Well, If she was never conceived, she would have never returned to god's arms. We have 7 grand-parents between my husband and I, and we know that she has a grand-parent for every day of the week in heaven and we are certain that they fight over her everyday!
That's Ella's story and she will always be our first born and our little angle watching over us from heaven! I miss her everyday and somtimes think I still feel her.

Please feel free to email mail me if you would like to talk. I have been looking everywhere for a support group. Maybe I have found it here.