By Michelle Schoen, Alpharetta, GA USA
PROM at 26 weeksDelivery at 34 weeks.
Story added: 2000-06-14

After a really bad 24 hour stomach flue I woke up around midnight the next night feeling a trickle of something coming out of me which I thought had to be blood but it turned out that my water had broken. I had just been at my obgyn and everything had been fine 2 days before so I kind of thought I would just go down to the hospital and they would tell me not to worry about it and send me home. Instead, they told me to plan on staying there until I delivered. That was a bit of a shock. They told me most women deliver in 48 hours, but if I made it past that I might go 2 or 3 more weeks. Well, 8 weeks later I was still there with never a sign of labor or infection. They finally chose to induce me at 34 weeks which was fine with me because I had hardly seen my 20 month old daughter while I was in there and I had read that 34 weekers do really well. The whole time I was on bedrest I rarely had any fluid that they could measure and I leaked constantly.

Joshua Michael was born 6 weeks early at 4 lb. 13 oz with an apgar of 9, but shortly thereafter had to be put on the vent. We had a rocky first week with his lungs and low blood pressure but now, after being on the vent for 2 weeks they are about to wean him off it and I don't think he will be in NICU more than another week or two while he grows and learns to eat. Now that it is almost all over it seems like it went by so fast. I think sometimes that if they had let me I probably could have delivered closer to full term since everything was so stable the whole time, but I will never know for sure if my luck would have run out and I could have gotten an infection towards the end. I am happy to talk to anyone who has questions about this experience.