Posted in PPROM and Infant Loss Awareness

This is the latest in a series of posts from last year during my daughter's 
PPROM pregnancy.  If you are going through a PPROM pregnancy 
yourself, please contact us at mkin@udata.com, and we will be do our 
best to direct you to the help and support that you so desperately need 
to get you through this experience.  We advise you to read the PPROM 
website, and to join their email support group, as this was the only group 
or site we found that gave us any real hope at all in a situation that we 
had found most doctors felt was completely hopeless.  
To read all of my posts on PPROM pregancies, click here.
The PROM List:   http://www.kanalen.org/prom/list/
Picture Gallery: http://www.kanalen.org/prom/gallery/
Log in with username: prom Password: bedrest 

This letter was written on March 3, 2005, at this same time, last year.

Dear Friends and Family,

Well, did I say that at the hospital there was a lack of tension and nothing but good news to several of you just yesterday? Me and my big mouth :-) What a night we had! Let's just start this update by saying, please pray for NO CONTRACTIONS!!! Not even itty bitty ones!

I went into Chelle's room, and she was hooked up to the monitor, so I thought that she had arranged for them to do it while I was there, like we had talked about. Then when I walked up to the bed, I saw all these tubes of blood the nurse had lying there, and then noticed she had an IV drip. Scared me to death, cause I knew that meant trouble, and not just monitoring so Grandma could see and hear!!!

Right before I had gotten there, and while Josh was running an errand, she had a bleed again. When they hooked her up to the monitor, it was registering small intermittent contractions. This is exactly what happened the first weekend she was in the hospital, the time they rushed her to Labor and Delivery and wanted to induce for abortion. Luckily, if anything would have happened last night, the baby would have been 28 weeks, and the picture certainly would have been different this time round. Thank God!

Anyway, they monitored her all night long, checked for internal bleeding, lots of blood work for infection, IV drips of fluids which can sometimes stop premature labor. (They will not medicate in her situation to stop labor, as usually labor with PPROM patients is because of infection, and it is better to deliver the baby.) They also did ultrasound scans to see if there were any placental problems, but they could not figure out what had caused the bleeding, just like the last two times. No apparent cause for either the bleeding or the contractions. They kept trying to decide whether to send her to L&D for better scanning and monitoring, but after the bleeding officially stopped, and they compared several of her monitoring strips, they decided everything seemed to be ok for her to stay put in her "luxury suite."

I stayed the night, and when I left this morning, everything had stabilized once again. So hopefully the little one will continue to stay inside Mommy where he/she can continue to grow and develop those lungs. I got to see precious little hands, feet, and face on the ultrasound, and little arms and legs stretching out. What an active baby!

So Week 28 was official at midnight and came in with a bang! It is so exciting to be at this point, and know that the baby has a wonderful chance to live and not have any major problems if for some reason Chelle would go into labor "for real." Of course we continue to hope and pray for the baby's birthday to be April 14.

Thanks again to everyone for all of your prayers and your love and concern for not only Chelle and the baby, but for Josh, and all the rest of the family.

Specific prayer requests for this week:
1. That Chelle continue to remain infection free. As I've said before, that is one of the biggest risks for PPROM patients.
2. That the bleeding and contractions she had last night were just another weird freak thing and that the baby will be delivered on April 14.
3. That as the days in the hospital are now over 50 days, Chelle will continue to be able to at peace and be able to cope with the bed rest for what will hopefully be another 6 weeks.
4. We also are asking for prayers for my dad, Chelle's Grandpa. He was admitted to the hospital back home on Tuesday with pneumonia. He is 81, and in really great health for his age other than the pneumonia, but of course we are all very concerned about him. They have not been able to get the congestion to break up yet, so that would be our specific prayer request for him---that the congestion breaks up and his lungs begin to clear. 5. And would you all also please pray for Chelle's brother BJ? He just found out that a dear friend and mentor in Boy Scouting died instantly of a heart attack at the Scout camp yesterday. They were close, and this will be very hard for him. He will also be responsible for planning and participating in scouting's Broken Arrow Ceremony either at the funeral home or at the funeral itself, which will of course be hard.

Chelle's address remains the same as in previous updates.

God bless each of you for being such a support!
Kathy

I sent a second letter out that day, as the first one didn't make it to many people on several email lists that I was updating about Chelle and the baby, so here is the 2nd letter.  It was to be the last I wrote before Ellora was born at 29 weeks exactly one week later. 

Hello everyone,  I always have trouble with my messages getting through to the group when I write from webmail.  Since it hasn't come to me, I am assuming that it didn't get to any of the rest of you either, so will write again. 

Today is officially Week 28 for Chelle and baby.  But we had to have some scares thrown in just to keep us on our toes.  I went in to see Chelle last night, and the nurses had said they would do the monitoring and the scan while I was there last night so I could see, as I hadn't for quite awhile. So when I walked into the room and saw the monitor there, I didn't think a thing of it UNTIL I walked around to hug Chelle and saw that she was hooked up to an IV and the nurse had 5 test tubes of blood she had just drawn!  I was scared to death. 

Right before I had gotten there, she had had another major bleed.  But just like the other times, they found absolutely no reason for it. Thank God the baby was fine, and the contractions tapered off and stopped!  Chelle felt no pain at all, and couldn't believe that they were real contractions.  So we don't really know what is going on.  Maybe we'll never know. 

So we dodged another bullet.  The neonatalogist was in this morning and said that the baby is now about 2 1/2 pounds and that is still growing proportionately.  He sees no sign of any compression injuries at all, and says that is a good sign that there has been no lung compression either, even though the AFI still remains below 3.0.  He says that we are well into the 90% range for survival if Chelle does go into labor at this point.

What a way we have come the past 50+ days!  I got to see the baby's sweet little face on the ultrasound screen, and it is beautiful!  Thanks once again to all of you for all the wonderful help and advice you have given, and thanks to the owners of the website for all the information.  I honestly don't think we would have had the knowledge to have gotten to this point without all of you.  We continue to pray for all of you and your situations, too,

Blessings,  Kathy, Mom to Chelle and my precious grandbaby, who PPROM'ed  at @ 20 weeks, now 28 weeks, and hoping for an April 14 birthday.  Due date May 26.