Dana's story

I got pregnant last year on my honeymoon, au. 5 or 6... was really sick throughout the beginning of my pregnancy, but did get better for a while. It was around Dec. 12, the day after I had my sono finding out we were having a boy, that I started to hurt under my rib cage.... it would come and go.

I tried taking some tums of course, but that didn't help. Over the next week up to around Christmas eve the pains were becoming more frequent and more painful. But this being my first pregnancy, I still thought it must be some killer heart burn. It would make me so sick I would throw-up... I couldn't lie down at all from the pain...

So around Christmas Eve I knew I needed to call my ob... she was out of the office... the nurse said it sounded like gall bladder pain... she called the ob and they scheduled me a sono for a week and a half later. Said that there wasn't anything they could do for gall bladder stones while a person is pregnant.

So they left me with the impression that I just needed to live with this. I had gone two days without sleep, several days with barely any sleep before... was living in the bath tub which was the only place I felt any relief whatsoever. And was finally crying I was hurting so terribly. My dh said he was taking me to the emergency room. I was so reluctant to go, thinking we would be up there all night, they would tell us there was nothing they could do, etc....

Boy was I wrong. Got there and they took me up to L&D.... made me change, etc... tried to make me lie down.... I couldn't from pain. The nurse got all my stats... I was 22.5 weeks gestation.... my bp was 190/145 and got higher with each check... my urine had so much protein she asked if I had drank anything in the last few days even. They sent me for a sono, and my liver was swollen which was causing me so much pain. Enzymes were low... etc.

So they finally have me some pain meds... still hadn't told us anything about what was wrong... or what would be done. They hooked me up to a fetal monitor.... watched his heart rate and everything. The ob on call from my doctors office came in, someone we had never seen before. She kind of acted like we were stupid for not coming in earlier.... but after I told her the way my doctor had acted about it, she got off her high horse and was a lot nicer. But she did give us a lot of doom and gloom.

Told us that if she didn't deliver the baby, I would die... but that not to expect the baby to live. A baby at 22 weeks had virtually no chance of survival... etc. Did have the nerve at one point to ask us if the baby was planned, like that would matter at all....

Now after seeing her several times later, I realize she was worried about me.... never had handled a delivery of a baby so small... etc. She started trying to induce, but before I was even feeling contractions, the baby's heart rate was dropping. They had started me on magsulfate of course, which in itself is one of the worst experiences of my life. They scheduled a c-section for as soon as the surgeon could get there.

We finally did have some small hope when the neo came in. She told us how well equipped they were at the hospital for babies that were born early. Told us that although the chances were very slim, 5%, that the baby would even live, that they would do everything possible to save him.

So I later found out I would have to be awake for the c-section. My bp was too high for them to put me under, and for the babies sake it was better to use as little drugs as possible. It was miserable laying there.... I threw up four times while strapped to the table...

Caleb was born at 9:52 am on Dec 27, 1998, weighing 1 lb 3 oz, and was 11.5 inches long. He had RDS (respitory distress syndrome) was immediately ventilated... spent 7 weeks on a vent... was then moved to a nasal cannula (blow by oxygen) spent 6 more weeks on that. He spent 104 days (14.5 weeks) in NICU before coming home on April 7, 1999, 22 days before his due date.

He came home on no oxygen. He has BPD (breathing disease which may cause him to have severe asthma later, makes him breath fast, hard, and wheezes now), ROP (an eye disease which can cause blindness) was at stage 3, but has now regressed some... but he is doing so wonderfully really... those thing are very minor. He had hernia surgery before coming home also. On the left and right side.

He came home on April 7, weighing 4 lbs 15 oz, and now is probably over the 11lb mark. He'll be 7 months old this month, and may actually be over 20 inches now too.

He is our *little* miracle...

Dana