By Kate, Scotch Plains, NJ USA
PROM at 35 weeks + 6 days. Delivery at 36 weeks.
Story added: 2001-08-28

It was my first pregnancy, and was completely uneventful. I had fairly bad morning sickness the first trimester, but besides that there were no problems.

At just about 36 weeks I was woken up at 1:30am by a trickle of liquid. I didn't know what it was, and was relieved to see that it wasn't blood. I had heard stories of women who thought their water had broken, but in actual fact had just peed themselves, but I really didn't think that was the case.

I was actually able to get a couple more hours sleep, but then first thing in the morning I called my OB. I was still leaking and at 8:30am I saw my OB who confirmed PROM. He told me to go home, relax (yeah right!) and wait. If I started getting contractions I was to call him, otherwise I was to go to the hospital late in the afternoon.

No contractions - we got to the hospital at 5:30pm, and they gave me something called Cervadil to ripen the cervix. By the following morning I still wasn't having any contractions, and at 8am they started the Pitocin.

My body never went into labor on it's own, it was all the Pitocin. By 5pm I was about 9cm dilated, but I was starting to get a fever. My doctor gave me another hour to fully dilate or else she would have done an emergency CS. Half an hour later I was fully dilated and at 5:46 pm (40 hours after PROM), after being pulled out by forceps, my daughter Caroline was born.

She was a good weight for 36 weeks (7lb 7oz) but didn't breathe very well at first. She was in the NICU for 3 days, and then was under biliblankets at home for 3 days. Because of all her problems she was never able to latch on to breasfeed, but thankfully she is healthy now and will be turning 2 years old in 2 weeks!

I am currently 9 weeks pregnant with my second child and I'm worried that I may experience pPROM again, especially if it occurs earlier. The worst part is that my first OB appointment isn't till next week when I'll be 10.5 weeks, so I haven't been able to discuss it with my doctor yet.

I really want this baby to go to term. I just recently realised that I had an internal exam for the Group B Strep test 2 days before my water broke, and maybe that had something to do with it. I'm going to ask my OB about not having any internal exams late in pregnancy.