By Kathy Magee, Jackson, MO USA
PROM at 21 weeks + 4 days. Delivery at 29 weeks + 2 days.
Story added: 2006-05-31

At the beginning of 2005, my husband and I decided we were ready to add a baby to our household, but we never dreamed what we would have to ordeal in order to have her. I began taking fertility drugs in February and became pregnant during my first ovulation. Our baby was supposed to be due December 27. I have two blood clotting disorders that put my pregnancy at high risk and I began taking heparin shots immediately. On May 8, I began to bleed. The trip to the ER determined that it was only an implantation bleed. Everything went well for a month, until June 7 when I began bleeding again. This trip to the ER showed no known cause for the bleeding but the baby’s heart rate and growth were normal. I was sent home to rest for a couple days. After the 11th, I didn’t experience any more bleeding and on August 9 we found out we were expecting a girl (just what we wanted). Our daughter, Sheryl, became very active the next week, increasing our expectations that the rest of my pregnancy would go smoothly. On August 19, my husband and I attended a Relay for Life Cancer Walk in memory of his son who had died earlier in the year from liver cancer. During the evening and overnight, I began experiencing mild uncomfortableness that I simply associated with being on my feet for an extended period and the lack of sleep. When we returned home from the walk, we took a nap to rest up for the rest of the day. Around 1 p.m., I woke up and thought I was wetting the bed and rushed to the bathroom. I realized that I could not stop the flow and noticed a gush of blood. I ran into the bedroom and told my husband that I thought my water broke. I only thought, this cannot be happening to us! We cannot lose two children in the same year! I called the hospital as my husband drove me and explained that I was only 22 weeks 4 days pregnant and I was sure my water broke.
As they took me to the maternity floor a nurse handed me a test strip to check the acidity of my discharge. Nobody really said anything to me as they came into my room to hook me up to monitors and IV fluids, but I overheard a nurse talking that the PH definitely showed that I lost amniotic fluid. I was wheeled to the ultrasound room and the ultrasound showed no amniotic fluid. They estimated Sheryl weighed exactly a pound. When I returned to the maternity room, the doctor informed me that they were going to administer antibiotics, steroids, and medicine to keep me from contracting (which I hadn’t been doing at that point). If I did not deliver my baby that night, they were going to have me transferred to a hospital with a Level III NICU in St. Louis, almost 2 hours away. On Sunday morning, I was transferred to St. Louis where they monitored me and performed another ultrasound. A neonatal nurse came in to talk to us and told us all the gory details with absolutely no hope. The doctor who saw me there told me they would release me on Monday since my baby was not viable if I were to deliver her and that I should explore my options of terminating my pregnancy when I returned home.
I saw my OB the day after I returned home and contacted a different hospital in St. Louis to provide care for the rest of my pregnancy. This maternal-fetal medicine specialist was wonderful and gave us so much more hope than anyone else. She still told us the negative but was much more hopeful since I had already made it one week since my water broke. She instructed me to return to the hospital for admission anytime after 24 weeks. On September 16, at 25 weeks 3 days, I was admitted to a different hospital in St. Louis. The time passed well, but I missed my family that could only come to see me on the weekends.
At 12:30 a.m. on October 13, contractions began showing on our monitor. The nurses brought me medication to stop contractions but it did not work. At 4 a.m., I called my husband and had him time my contractions. When we realized they were lasting for a minute and a half and were a minute apart, I called the nurse and Sean left from home. Sean arrived at 6 a.m. and I began preparations for Sheryl’s birth. The epidural only worked halfway (I was only numb on one side). Because I made it past 28 weeks, I had a vaginal delivery and Sean was able to cut the cord. At 12:39 p.m., I delivered a 2 pound 15 ounce, 16 ½-inch long baby girl that we named Sheryl LeeAnne. The neonatoligist and nurses worked on Sheryl and that first cry was a huge sigh of relief for us. They briefly brought her to me as a nurse pumped her oxygen then they whisked her away to the NICU. Before going to my recovery room, we went to the NICU (along with my mom and sister) to see where our baby was and how she was doing.
The next couple days were a blur of oxygen tanks, nitrous oxide, blood pressure medicine, blood transfusion, ultrasounds and x-rays. Sheryl’s oxygen was never set higher than 40 breaths per minute. On Sunday, we held our daughter for the first time. Sheryl came off her ventilator on Monday and was put on a CPAP. The CPAP was changed to a nasal canula on the fifth day. We spent the next two weeks traveling back and forth from home to the hospital as much as possible and calling every time we got a chance to check on her. She did well. At two weeks, we had her transferred to a NICU closer to home so we could see her every day. Sheryl progressed quickly, getting off her nasal canula two weeks later. Sheryl required special boots for her feet to help correct them as her feet turned in due to the cramped space during the end of my pregnancy. Her biggest problems were her feeding (she just didn’t want to do it) and apnea and bradycardia “spells”. Sheryl finally came home 7 weeks after her birth on November 31.
Since Sheryl’s been home, her only problem has been mild acid reflux. At her six month checkup she weighed 15 pounds and was 24 ¾ inches long. At six and half months, she learned how to roll over and now at seven and half months, she scoots on her belly to get around. Her favorite thing is to watch everything! She’s so curious and so interested.
I know that not every woman and every baby’s story of pprom is as promising as ours, but I hope that reading this will give you reassurance that your baby can beat all the odds. Do not let what the doctors tell you discourage you from having hope.