By Kelli Williams, Newhall, California USAIn two days it will be two years.
PROM at 24 weeks + 5 days. Delivery at 33 weeks.
Story added: 2007-03-20
I remember how many times I checked this page over and over, memorizing each story to figure out if there were any similarities to mine. When I was in the hospital, I kept wondering if I was going to write a PROM story with a green hyperlink or not.
Yep, it's a greenie.
I'm going to make this somewhat short. If I was smart and wrote it immediately, I could give you every temperature reading, every centimeter of fluid measurement, every single detail so you can internalize it and memorize it and draw your own conclusions.
But I got lazy and fortunate, and now it's all just a hazy dream.
It all started when I was 3 weeks pregnant (I know, I'm a freak when it comes to charting my menses, so I knew I was prg. right away), and I had slight cramping and bleeding. I was in and out of emergency rooms and unfriendly/unfeeling doctor's offices. No one could figure out why I was bleeding. Everyone seemed to think the baby wouldn't make it past the first trimester. Then weeks later, I was diagnosed with placenta previa, and suddenly the unknown reason had a name.
Every two weeks I would gush blood, and a few times, I would have debilitating cramps. All the while, I had twenty-four nausea and vomiting. I was on Zofran and was committed to bedrest.
Magically, the second trimester mark came and the bleeding stopped. I got the okay to go back to work. The placenta was in the right place. No blood, no cramps... days later, my water broke at 24 and a half weeks.
My widwife was convinced it was over. She was crying. The nurses at the hospital treated me like dirt. The NICU doctors who consulted with me at 3am when I could barely think straight were so unhappy. But it didn't seem right. My husband and I just shook our heads. Everything they told us sounded so dreadful, so final, but we both knew that everything, for some reason, was going to be okay.
Every day was supposed to be "THE" day. There was no way I could go 12 hours without delivering, 24 hours, 48 hours, okay a week...two weeks? Try nine weeks.
After 65 days of hospital bedrest, squirting out fluid every time I coughed, laughed, sat up, smiled, I gave birth to my boy at 33 weeks exactly -- an emergency c-section, he was breach, with so very little fluid. He cried on his own, and they intubated him right away. 3 pounds 12 ounces.
The first weeks in the NICU are a blur of my undying optimism. So many nay- sayers and cynics and skeptics tried to analyze his problems and give me the statistics, but all I knew was that he was alive and amazing.
He had lung damage, a brief spell with NEC (not a NEC scare--the real deal), and reflux bad enough to keep him from going home for 70 days despite being a decent weight and his various illnesses being under control.
After we got home, a lil tv show called "Bringing Home Baby" can fill in the rest. We're so boringly normal and happy and healthy. The only issue we seem to have is that Saki won't talk aside from "Dada" and the occasional "Mama," but I hear that's a blessing in disguise...
In two days he will be two.
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