By Sara Pearce, Minneapolis, MN USALike so many others, my story started with a horrifying gush one morning. It was my second pregnancy, and my first was complicated by a few weeks of preterm labor which then stopped and I went on to have a healthy boy at 37.5 weeks.
PROM at 24 weeks + 4 days. Delivery at 31 weeks + 5 days.
Story added: 2004-08-03
My water broke at 5 am, totally out of the blue. I woke up to the gush, and went in to the hospital right then and there because I knew what had happened.
I spent the next 7 weeks in the hospital, on pins and needles. We had to hire a full-time nanny for my son because I am currently a stay-at-home mom. Only getting to see him for a few short visits a week was just as bad as the worry over the pregnancy!
I was lucky to avoid infection or labor until I was 31.5 weeks along. During that time though my placenta slowly started shearing off the wall of my uterus, resulting in chronic bleeding. My amniotic fluid level also went down over time, from 5 cms at the beginning to less than 2 cms for the final few weeks.
Finally at 31.5 weeks I went into labor, and the doctor did a c-section because the baby was breech. She was born severely septic and almost died her first night. But she responded to the antibiotics and had a relatively uneventful NICU course, and came home 5 weeks later.
She is now thriving at the time I write this (4 months old). But we certainly had a close call, and i could have easily been one of the unlucky ones. We're so thankful.