By Brandy, Killeen, Texas USAI spent 3 months to the day on bedrest and I hoped and prayed as I read through these stories that I would have a good outcome. But, I read the stories with good outcomes and the ones with bad outcomes. I did this mainly to gain information in hopes of saving the life of my baby, but I wasn't in a place at first to read the stories with bad outcomes...that came with time.
PROM at 16 weeks + 6 days. Delivery at 30 weeks.
Story added: 2010-05-15
This was my first pregnancy. At 9 weeks I started bleeding. My ob, Dr W, said that it was a threatened miscarriage and told me what to look for if I passed "the products of conception." Instead of waiting for that to happen, I put myself on strict bed rest and bled until 14 weeks.
On October 17, 2009 at 16w 6days my water broke. It was 2am and my husband and I immediately went to labor and delivery triage. We met with a resident, Dr B-H, who did an ulrasound, a nitrazine test and a speculum exam. She immediately diagnosed that my water had broken and there was very little (less than 1cm) of fluid left. She gave me my options, induction or expectant management. I had her explain the induction process, but only to be informed because I had no intention of inducing labor. I told her I chose expectant management and I could tell that she felt sorry for me and the situation but didn't have much hope for the future of my pregnancy. Dr B- H told us to meet with Dr W on Monday morning to see what he had to say about the situation.
My husband and I left the hospital in tears. I knew what happened was bad, but at the time, I had no idea what it really meant for a pregnancy. I went back on bed rest as soon as we got home and started drinking as much water as I could possibly drink. That week, my baby flipped from the breech position to being head-down. I also got online and read, read, read about pPROM and tried to find things I could to to save my baby. Thankfully, I found this website. I then created my own blog, pprom.wordpress.org, to document my pregnancy and provide information to anyone who needed it. On Monday Dr W had nothing solid for me but did go along with my request for antibiotics.
I feel really lucky that my husband was there for me over those weeks upon weeks of bed rest, because it was scary and mentally draining for me. I had plenty of time to research pPROM. I started taking vitamins C (4-6 grams/day) & E (800iu/day) because I read that it prolonged latency (the time between when your water breaks and when you go into labor). I took several supplements by Standard Process: Utrophin PMG, Collagen-C & Pneumotrophin PMG, each 3x/day. During the time I took Collagen-C I retained fluid for several days at a time each week. I also took Garden of Life Primal Defense to try and further ward off infection.
I saw Dr W every week and Dr A, the high risk specialist, once a week also. Both of them were kind, but neither of them had any amount of hope for my baby. The had me come in every week to track my progress and monitor for infection. Dr A felt very strongly about me moving into the hospital at 24 weeks. I was doing well at home, and felt that emotionally it would be better for me to stay home and keep doing what I had been doing. So, I convinced Dr A to let me have my steroids and antibiotics as an outpatient and told him we'd talk about hospitalization the following week.
I ended up holding out until 27 weeks to move into the hospital. Things went smoothly at the hospital for the most part. At 28 weeks, I had some bleeding and several hours of contractions, but then they stopped, a couple days later my doctors decided to to the 2nd round of steroids. Then, at the very beginning of my 30th week I started bleeding again and contracting seriously at 2am on January 17, 2010. I labored in my hospital room with my husband asleep on the couch until 6am. By then my contractions were 1-3 minutes apart, so I had the nurse come in and hook me up to the monitor. Within a couple minutes, Dr B-H (who had followed me from triage, to the high risk clinic and was with me throughout my stay in the antepartum unit) came in and said I was in labor and she wanted to check me. She did a manual exam (my 1st since October) and I was 5cm and 100% effaced. It was my baby's birthday.
They wheeled me down the hall to labor and delivery and put an i.v. in. They put me in the delivery suite right next to the operating room, just in case I needed an emergency c-section. At 7am I took fentanyl for pain. By 10ish, the pain was so intense that I decided to get an epidural (which I was totally against, going into this.) The pain was probably something I could have handled, but with my nerves fried from worry about my baby and a deep-down feeling that the birth would need to be by c- section, I was mentally ok with the decision to have an epidural.
I had not had anything to eat since the previous evening's dinner and shortly after 12pm I started feeling faint, like I was going to pass out. My vitals stayed ok, but at 12:15 my baby's heartrate dropped low. A whole group of nurses came in while I was feeling faint and put an oxygen mask on me and wheeled me to the operating room. Thankfully, I had a good epidural, the medications kicked in fast and my baby was born at 12:18pm.
He was a boy. 2lbs 8oz and 14.5" long. We named him Clark. The NICU team was able to stabilize him and about 30 minutes after he was born they brought him back into the operating room for me to see him for about a minute. He was beautiful..and PINK. They wheeled him away to the NICU and I went to recovery. As soon as I was released to post partum they took me, in my bed with wheels, to the NICU.
Clark was doing well and was on the oscillating ventilator. The next day, I got out of bed and pushed a wheelchair to the NICU. Clark had a rough night because he extubated himself. While re-intubating him, the doctor nicked his airway and a week later he came down with a deadly pseudomonas infection from an infected ventilator. They didn't think he would make it through the night. After hundreds and hundreds of prayers for Clark's life, he made it through and by February 3 was taken off the ventilator and put onto CPAP for one day. After that he went to the high flow nasal cannula, which he was on for weeks on various oxygen settings. He had ups and downs, the typical "nicu rollercoaster", multiple bad days littered with crashes and bagging. Some good days, but overall the NICU was the biggest physical and emotional drain of my life and completely fried my nerves. Eventually he was completely weaned off of oxygen therapy.
He was diagnosed with a ventricular septal defect (hole in the heart), absent septum pellucidum, dislocated left hip, leg & arm contractures and had surgery for two very extensive inguinal hernias. We are still working with pediatric orthopedists on his hip which will likely require surgery.
After 75 days in the NICU, Clark was able to come home on April 2, 2010 at 5lbs 2oz. Every minute on bed rest and scary day in the NICU was completely worth it. As scary as pPROM is, you must be your baby's advocate. It's very hard work and there is never a guarantee that it will work out, but if you ever need to talk my email address is brandy.l.kelley@gmail.com and please feel free to email me.