By Paul Smith, Brisbane, Queensland Australia
PROM at 14 weeksDelivery at 26 weeks + 4 days.
Story added: 2004-09-29

I was both shocked and excited when my wife told me we had a baby on the way only 5 weeks after our wedding.
This was my first baby and my wife's second, she has a 12 year old daughter Jessica who was born by emergency ceasarian at a healthy 7 pounds.

Everything was going along fine with the pregnancy in the early stages and then one day I found my wife crying because she was spotting blood.
We rushed off to our obstetrician who performed a scan which confirmed all was well with the baby, and recommended that she take it easy and get plenty of bed rest.
Later that day however she experienced a rush of fluid which she took to be some kind of involuntary bladder problem.

A week later after a second scan I came home to find my poor wife again crying and she told me that the scan had revealed that all her fluid was gone. At this stage we were only 14 weeks into the pregnancy and it seemed that the general opinion was that she was going to lose the baby, even though it seemed the baby was in good health and with a strong heartbeat.
After a particular bout of leaking and loss of blood my wife was admitted to hospital and given intravenous antibiotics. A few days later the leaking stopped, she was released to go home and we allowed ourselves the luxury of thinking that maybe all was OK and the rupture had healed itself.
However his was just the first of a cycle of leaking and not leaking that continued for the next 11 weeks.

We endured scan after scan, as well as being advised many times that the prognosis for a baby affected by PPROM at such an early stage (14weeks) was poor.
Despite the sometimes days on end without leaking, every scan we had showed little to no fluid around our poor little fellow.
Most of the doctors we saw however did seem to think as we did, that if this baby was prepared to fight as it was doing, then it seemed the right thing to do everything we could to help him in that fight.

The baby made excellent progress despite his lack of fluid, however after about 8 weeks he did show signs of being slightly smaller than he should as well as very slight "contractures" in his limbs.

My wife was admitted to hospital by our obstetrician as soon as she reached the magical 24 week stage, she was given steroid injections and antibiotics to help protect and develop the babies lungs. Our obstetrician had her "pencilled in" for a cesarian delivery in her 30th week.

This was not to be however as on 5 September (Father's Day) her contractions started.
Our obstetrician had already anticipated this from an earlier scan and he opted to deliver the baby right away, since the baby was showing signs of stress.

Little Leo was born at 9:49pm on 5 September, he made a little cry as he came out and this gave us great hope for his little lungs. The doctors (there were five of them!) immediately put him on a respirator and squirted a suffactant into his lungs to aid his breathing.
He was 26 and a half weeks and weighing 627grams, and quite long for his size at 31 centimetres.

We were so overjoyed when they told us that he was doing fine, we spent ages just looking at him in his little humidicrib, he would always be moving his little arms and legs and opening his little blue eyes. Even the doctors seemed cautiously optimistic, and for a while everything certainly looked good.

After 3 days however his blood pressure started to drop, his colour wasn't great and the doctor told us that they suspected he could have "necrotising entrocolitis", a rather serious complication that preemies can get.

Leo's condition rapidly deteriorated from there, it was heartbreaking to watch our little fighter losing his fight, they told us that despite using three different drugs to try and raise his blood pressure as well as a small procedure to release gas from his tummy, they were fighting a losing battle and already he was in a state from which he could not recover.
Sadly the decision was made to remove him from the machines, the nurses and staff allowed us time to hold him, tell him how proud we are and how much we love him and say goodbye.

We will never forget our first little son, we love him so much and we can't help but think he was here for us to teach us something about life.
Not only did Leo bring me my first Father's day but he was also coincidently born on the anniversary of his namesake and great grandfather Leo.

He was born on 5 September 2004, and sadly passed away on 10 September 2004.
We may never know what caused the PPROM, our obstetrician told us that the pathology on the placenta revealed that quite amazingly there was absolutely no trace or history of infection.
He does suspect however that the initial bleeding may have contributed to the rupture.