By Clare, Arizona USA
PROM at 17 weeksDelivery at 19 weeks.
Story added: 2007-09-13

I found out I was pregnant in November of 2006, right before Thanksgiving. My husband and I weren't even trying, so I was pretty shocked when I found out I was expecting. We told his family the weekend of Thanksgiving, I was about 7 weeks then.
On the way home from our weekend with his family, I started bleeding pretty heavily. The only thing I knew was that I was probably having a miscarriage. I called my dr. and he advised me to go to the ER as soon as I could. (I hadn't even had my first OB checkup yet). We went to the ER immediately. They did several tests and told me to expect to miscarry and sent me home. I went back a couple days later and they told me that I hadn't miscarried yet, but the chances were good that I still would. A couple days after that I saw my dr. for the first time since I had gotten pregnant. The bleeding had slowed significantly and I was only spotting a little bit every now and then. The dr. told me that everything looked great, in spite of the early pregnancy bleeding, and that there was only a 3% chance that I'd lose my baby.
Although I was at times skeptical, I began to get very excited about having a child.
Unfortunately, one Sunday I stood up at the end of the service and felt a gush of water. I thought I had started to bleed again and rushed to the bathroom. I was confused to find out that there was no blood and thought that I had just had a moment of incompetence. Later that afternoon I laid down to rest and felt another huge gush of water. We went to the ER immediately and they told me my uterus had ruptured. I was put on bedrest for a week. After a week of doing nothing but going to the bathroom and laying in bed I went back to the dr. My baby was still alive, but there was no water at all and the uterus had collapsed on the baby. I was given the option to terminate the pregnancy, but as long as I could see that steady little heartbeat I knew I would never be able to end it. I went back every two days for two weeks for checkups and each time was told I would need to make a decision soon about ending the pregnancy or the risk of infection would increase and potentially could put myself at risk. Every time the heartbeat was still there. All I could think of were the ultrasounds where my baby was "jumping" up and down inside of me or "waving" his little hand. Two and a half weeks later I found out that our baby had passed away. I was devastated. We went in the next morning so that I could be induced. It was a long and agonizing day, but I gave birth that same evening to a baby boy. He weighed almost 2 lbs.
It's now been almost 8 months since we lost him and I am hungry for any information that I can get that might give me a clue as to why things happened the way they did. I'll probably never understand it.
We want to try to get pregnant again, but I have so many fears and am so scared the same thing will happen again.
If anyone has any advice or suggestions on this, please feel free to email me. Both of my sisters-in-law have given birth to beautiful, healthy babies since I have lost mine and I can only hope and pray that one day soon God will give me a baby of my own.
I've read so many of your stories and know the same, real pain that many of you have experienced and I pray that God will answer your desires in a very special way.