By Odete, Bronx, NY USAMy PROM story:
PROM at 22 weeksDelivery at 23 weeks + 6 days.
Story added: 2007-10-25
Honestly, I don’t even know when my water broke all I know is by the time I had gotten to the hospital, I had no fluid left. Here is my story:
I am 29 and this was my first pregnancy. I have been with my fiancé for 6 ½ years and you can say we have been trying to get pregnant for about 2 years. We didn’t count days or anything like that, we just never used protection. After 2 years without using protection, and not getting pregnant, I was starting to get nervous. In March of this year I had a false alarm. My period was a few days late and I thought this was it but then I got my period and it crushed me. I was really upset and truly thought I wasn’t able to conceive. The next month I decide to actually count days and do it the ‘right’ way.
The following month, in May, my period never came. I took a test on May 8th and it was the happiest day of my entire life. I cried, I laughed, I cried some more…it was an unbelievable feeling. You can say the problems started almost right away. 2 weeks later, I was 6 weeks, I started spotting. I immediately freaked out. I hadn’t seen a doctor yet because I had just found out and my appointment wasn’t for another few weeks. In the building I work in there is an OB, so I went right upstairs and explained to her what was going on. She sent me for an emergency scan. The scan came back fine. The baby was there and the heart beat was very strong. It was an amazing feeling, hearing my baby’s heartbeat for the first time.
By the time I had my first appointment the spotting had stopped and everything seemed to be going well until a few weeks later. At about 11 weeks I woke up covered in blood. It was the scariest moment in my life. My entire bed was covered in blood. I started yelling and my fiancé picked me up and brought me to the bathroom. I hopped in the shower were I continued to bleed. It was as if someone had opened a faucet. It was not stopping, it just kept coming. I also passed several huge clots. I thought “I’m losing my baby”, who wouldn’t think that? I had never seen so much blood and it scared the crap out of me. I called the emergency number for my doctor. (I went to a practice were there were 4 doctors and whoever was on call would be the one you would deal with. I had a main doctor who I saw on visits.) One of the other doctors called me. She was very blunt with me and told me that there was no point in going to the hospital because if I am miscarrying there is nothing they can do to stop it. This was about 5 in the morning. She told me to wait until 9 and go into the office because if they had to they would perform a D & C. Needless to say I cried the entire time until I got to the office. They did a scan and the baby was there, swimming around and making faces at me. It was such an overwhelming feeling I cried.
I ended up having a huge blood clot in my uterus. The doctor explained that sometimes the uterus doesn’t properly absorb the extra blood a pregnant woman’s body produces causing the clots. I was put on bed rest for a week. After the week, I passed the rest of the clots and the bleeding finally stopped. I was about 17 weeks when the spotting completely stopped. I had my regular appointment and I was told that the pregnancy should be smooth sailing from now. My clot hadn’t come back and the baby was actually bigger than he was supposed to be. I found out the sex early because of all the scans I had done. She also told me that at my next appointment, @ 24 weeks, they were going to give me a steroid shot to help develop the babies’ lungs. She said that because of the bleeding early on that I was at risk for preterm delivery. This freaked me out a little but I was willing to do anything to ensure my baby would be healthy.
About 3 or 4 weeks later I notice my discharge getting heavier, so heavy that I had to use pads. I commute to work on the train and one morning I leaked so much that I wet my pants. When I got to work I was so scared that I had broken my water, I was about 21 weeks. I called the doctor who had me go in right away. Again, my main doctor was not in and I had to deal with the same doctor who dealt with the blood clot. According to her, she did all the tests they do to check if the fluid was amniotic and everything came back negative. She basically said I was urinating on myself. So every time I would feel like I was leaking I just thought my baby kicked my bladder and caused me to wet myself. I had a hard time believing that I was peeing on myself, especially since I went to the bathroom every 5 minutes, but doctors know best, right?
The night before I went into labor I didn’t feel right. I knew something was off but since I was in and out the doctor’s office and every time I went nothing was wrong, everything was fine, I thought maybe I was being paranoid so I said nothing. The next morning, I felt a little cramping. On the way to work, I leaked again and this time it was a lot. At this time I was working part time due to so much time off I was taking, so I waited until it was time for me to go and went in to see my doctor. The whole time, from 8 am to 1 pm, the pains just kept on getting worst and worst. I felt horrible and I just knew something was not right. When I got to the doctor they hooked me up to the fetal machine. About 10 minutes later I started bleeding, so much that they couldn’t test whether or not I was leaking fluid. She told me I had to go to the hospital so they can check the fluid. I walked to the hospital, yes I walked, it was only 2 blocks away and I honestly, didn’t think I was going to go into labor. Somehow I thought they would be able to stop it because I didn’t realize I was leaking fluid.
When I got to the hospital, I was admitted and they did a scan. The scan showed that I had no fluid left and the baby was coming out and nothing could be done to stop it. They didn’t know what caused it, why I went into labor. They wanted to “help it along”, which meant they wanted me to kill my baby. They were concerned that I would bleed to death. I refused; it didn’t matter to me that my life was at risk. Actually it didn’t even hit me until after the fact. His prognosis wasn’t good. They gave him a 5% chance of leaving the delivery room and that was if I decided to have a c section. Which, If I decided to have a c section I would be putting future pregnancies at risk. The type of c section they had to do would force me to have a c section with all pregnancies and my chances of carrying full term would drop significantly. It was a tough decision but I just could not risk future pregnancies so I decided to deliver naturally. They did not induce me; he came naturally about 3 hours later. Jacob David was born @ 8:28 PM on September 13th. He was a pound and a half and perfect. Before I gave birth I told them that I wanted them to do everything possible to save him. I was told that it depends on whether or not they would be able to put the tube down his throat. Since he was bigger than expected, they were able to do it. He stayed with me for 10 hours before he passed away. His lungs were just too under developed and he couldn’t breathe on his own.
It has only been 6 weeks today and I still don’t understand why it happened. I have an appointment with a high risk tomorrow. Hopefully, they can figure out what happened and give me the OK to try again.