By Valerie, Missouri USAMy water broke with no warning the day before I was to be 21 weeks. The doctors never did figure out why this happened but we assume that a bout of blood a month prior had something to do with it.
PROM at 20 weeks + 6 days. Delivery at 29 weeks.
Story added: 2009-06-26
All subsequent tests showed everything fine with the baby, just that her water was broken. I went on to full bed rest. (I had been on bed rest prior with the blood but had come off of it and onto limited activity before my water breaking so when it broke, I was already taking it easy.)
I know at first that the doctors were not hopeful. I had been transferred from my regular OBGYN to a group of 4 specialists. My main new doctor did offer the possibility of terminating the pregnancy but when my husband and I refused, nothing more was said. However, up until the time I entered the hospital, I think none of the doctors really had a good outlook on the whole thing, I think they expected that we would loses the baby. I had weekly ultrasounds from then on out and they showed the baby was breech.
I was to enter the hospital at 26 and a half weeks due to some confusion about dates and how weekends fell, etc., originally I was to enter at 24 weeks. The day I went in, I went for another ultrasound first. The tech was very surprised - the baby they all said probably couldn't turn because there was no fluid - she turned! She was vertex. Over the next few weeks, she would turn another TWO times! She would be transverse and then vertex again, the day of her birth. I received the steroid shots the first and second days of my hospital stay.
I was in the hospital just shy of 3 weeks when I spontaneously went into labor and the baby was born just a few short hours later after a total of 8 weeks and 1 day with her water broken. During the labor, they put a tube up to the uterus to give her some extra fluid. As long as she tolerated it, they planned to let me progress naturally. Her heartbeat would drop with every contraction but we made it in the end without a c-section. The baby may have even come sooner had they not had me sitting up for a full half an hour getting the epidural. The first guy took two tries before they sent someone else in who did "something different" and got it first try. Just a few seconds after they laid me back down, before they could even hook me up to medicine, the baby was born without any medical personnel nearby. I was actually trying to HOLD her in! I was yelling that she was coming NOW and she did. I see it now all in slow motion. The sole nurse in the room turned and ran towards me and five billion people (ok, more like 20) poured into the room. The doctor was first, he must have been running down the hall while I was yelling!
Immediately NICU personnel took the baby and got her breathing tube in. Her initial apgar score was 3 and that was followed by a 6. But those scores mean nothing! As I write this, she is now 11 weeks old and considered to be 40 weeks' gestation. She is still in the NICU but is doing well. Because her water was broken for 8 weeks, her lungs are even more premature than the rest of her body but she is making her way and I can already see a feisty spirit in her.
Hopefully she will come home very soon. She needs to learn to take all of her feedings via mouth and, I believe, she's good to go!
No matter your situation -- do not give up hope! Miracles can and do happen!
And always try to see the brighter side of things, know that everything happens for a reason. Our daughter also has some kidney problems namely reflux (grade 3 and 5) and lowered function (in the grade 5 kidney). These problems are NOT in any way related to her water being broken or her prematurity. They are just something that happened and we got to find out about them before they caused her problems BECAUSE of my numerous ultrasounds. It's amazing how things work out. :)
My blog: http://spoken-for.org