By Jolene Watson, Caloundra, Queensland AustraliaI started having light bleeding in the 14th week of my first pregnancy and it continued spontaneously. I lost a large blood clot during this time and was told to take bedrest, which I did. The bleeding calmed down over the next month and we though we were on track again, I began feeling kicks and had no bleeding for a whole fortnight. Things changed when I lost all of my amniotic fluid on the 3rd June 2005 (17+3wk) in three big gushes starting at 7.30am. I was 27 years old. Young, healthy, non-smoker.
PROM at 17 weeks + 3 days. Delivery at 30 weeks + 5 days.
Story added: 2005-12-05
My husband and I went to the hospital to see my OB. She said I had PPROM'd and prescribed the usual 48 hours in hospital, during which time we were told we would lose our baby (50% chance) and if this didn't happen we should think about inducing, so as not to postpone the inevitable. We were told that if we had the baby there would be many things wrong with it. We were very scared. My husband and I decided there and then that if there was something wrong with our baby, my body would reject it and apart from that we left it in God's hands. I was allowed to go home on oral antibiotics for a week in which time (90% chance) I would most likely lose our precious little baby. I was told to take bedrest, but this time we though we would not postpone the inevitable and made the most of our time together and went and enjoyed ourselves and our bump and wanted to remember it as a positive time after spending much of the pregnancy stressed and worried about what the heck was going on in there. During that week, I found this site. Which I will always be grateful for.
After the week was up we went to see the OB. She was shocked that nothing had happened yet and even more horrified to realise I hadn't taken bedrest. I had a small loss of fluid that morning (the only loss all week), but she was surprised on the U/S to see our little bub still moving around quite freely in such a small amount of fluid.
I was closely monitored over the next few weeks, every minute expecting to lose the little life inside me. We were finally admitted, when I was 24 weeks pregnant, to Royal Brisbane Womens Hospital, which has a NICU, 90 minutes from home. It was so wonderful to finally make it to the viable stage, when finally there was hope of saving our baby when he decided to come. I spent one week in hospital under observation, and when the were happy that I was stable I was released as an out patient to Ronald McDonald House, right next door to the hospital. The days crawled by. I had weekly appointments with OB's and midwives, swabs, blood tests, U/S's, CTG's, urine tests, the works.
My husband and I had a tour of the NICU and got a feel of what to expect. I also met with one of the specialist pediatricians and we talked about what could go wrong. It was a very daunting and scary time.
I was booked in for an elective C/S at 34 weeks but at 30+5 weeks I started having contractions at 3.15am and was admitted to hospital at 10.30am, but the midwives were hoping the contractions would stop. They got closer together (but never painful), so I rang my husband to come and be with me. He arrived at 2.30pm and when my doctor finally got to see me at 6pm, I was 7cm dilated and contractions 3 minutes apart. She broke the remaining waters and everything went too quickly after that, so I was put under G/A for an emergency C/S. During the birth of our baby, the doctors discovered that I have a bicornuate uterus.
I woke up at 2am the next morning, with a flat tummy, not knowing what had happened. I rang my husband and found out we had a little boy boy in the NICU and he was fine. He was born on 3rd September 2005, 7.39pm, weighing 1670gms. I was awake all morning waiting for the moment to meet him.
Our baby, Angus, was in an incubator, has monitors hooked up all over him, tubes going in and coming out, but in reality was a healthy little baby, just premature.
It was amazing. The next two weeks flew and crawled along all at the same time. We watched with our hearts in our throats as the tubes were removed one by one and we were moved from the NICU to Special Care and then Angus was transferred by helicopter to the Special Care Unit at our nearest hospital, 20 minutes away. All the time he progressed well. It was so good to be finally home after 9 weeks away in hospital and a total of 13 weeks on bedrest, even though Angus was still in hospital.
On the 28th October 2005, after 48 days in hospital, Angus finally came home. A sleep study confirmed that he has chronic lung disease and needs to be on home oxygen for 3 months, with another sleep study after that time to determine if he will need it for any longer. Amazingly other than that he is perfect. I honestly never knew if he would make it. He is my little miracle boy. He is now 10 weeks old and is 41 weeks gestationally. He has doubled his birth weight and I cannot stop looking at him and smiling and thanking God that I put my faith in Him and not the doctors who told me he wouldn't make it.