November 17th was World Prematurity Day. In honor of this, I would like to share my story.
Fourteen years ago, I was a young newlywed and incredibly excited to finally be a parent. I was only 20 years old, but my biggest goal in life was to be a mom and raise a big family, just like my parents did. At different points in my life I wanted to be a mom and a model, or a mom and an actress, or a mom and a writer- the occupation may have changed, but the desire to be a mom never did. So here I was at 20 years old and married to my first boyfriend. He wanted to be a parent as much as I did, even though he was only 26. We tried to do everything right- ate healthy, read multiple baby books, and had regular doctor’s visits. We even read a few psychology books and planned out our parenting strategy. We both wanted a boy, yet when we found out we were having a baby girl, immediately we were both ecstatic. We sang to our precious little girl while she was in my womb, read books to her, and even played classical music with the headphones strategically placed so our little child could hear it. After the first trimester, I had that “motherly glow” and I was the happiest I had ever been. My belly was getting big pretty fast and by the time I was 5 months pregnant, my back started aching. I didn’t know it at the time, but that simple backache would lead to the death of my child only a few days later.
On July 23, 2002 I went to work just like any other day. I was a little tired because my back had been hurting so much lately that it was hard to sleep. While at work my back was still hurting, but I thought nothing of it. Then I had this weird feeling inside me. It was a little more intense than the “flutter” feeling of the baby kicking inside me. It was also a little lower than the usual kicking would be, but it didn’t hurt. It just felt weird. So I didn’t say anything. Later I described the feeling to my husband as “Aliens probing around down there,” but it made sense to me because I had a little human growing inside me, so I chalked it up to just one of the anomalies of motherhood.
That night as we were getting ready for bed, I used the restroom and noticed a little bit of blood. I wasn’t too scared because it was only a few drops and I read that spotting occurs occasionally. My husband was much more panicked and it’s a good thing that he was. He rushed me to the hospital and within an hour I had 2 young nurses put their hands inside me and say “Hmmm… that’s weird” and “Yeah, that’s not right. That definitely shouldn’t be happening.” By the time my doctor got there, he explained that I was in full on labor. It turns out that my uterus is tilted towards the back instead of the front like most women, so when I go into labor, my back hurts, not my stomach. I wish someone had told me that earlier!
Inside my womb, my precious little girl was perfectly healthy, but she wasn’t mature enough yet to survive outside the womb. They rushed me to the maternity ward and gave me magnesium sulfate to slow down the labor process and injected me with steroids to mature poor Catalina’s lungs a little faster. The Dr. explained that I simply have an “incompetent cervix” and it just randomly opens up after a certain amount of time. It’s not strong enough to keep a baby inside me for the entire 9 months and there’s no reason for it.
The “alien probe” feeling I had was actually the fetal membranes poking out of the cervix. We had 2 options- attempt to stuff the membranes back inside me and do a cerclage (procedure to temporarily sew the cervix shut) and keep me on hospital bedrest for as long as possible to give our child time to grow and mature in safety, or let her be born right away. For me it was a no-brainer- I wanted to save my child’s life, even though it meant I would most likely die from infection. You see, since the fetal membranes were hanging out for over a day, there was a very great chance that they had picked up some sort of bacteria and I would catch it quickly if we went that route. My husband and my parents wouldn’t let me do that, so I had to go with option #2- let Catalina be born 4 months early.
Even though she was perfectly healthy inside me, in a few hours she would be out in the real world where her organs weren’t developed enough. A peri-natalogist came in and explained that she would have problems with her heart, lungs, eyes, digestion, and most likely she would never walk. There were a lot of things they could do to prolong her life but she was definitely going to suffer and there was no guarantee whether she would live a few years or a few months- the only guarantee is that she would die young. We didn’t want our daughter to suffer, so even though we wanted to be parents so bad, we went the natural route. She was born on July 24th at 4:28 pm and weighed 15 oz. Her face and shoulders were purple from being bruised by the birthing process. She never cried and she never opened her eyes. But for an hour we got to hold our perfect little girl in our arms. We sang to her and watched her lungs struggle to breathe. Both sets of grandparents were able to hold her as well as aunts and uncles. We even got a few pictures. Catalina died in my arms. I’m not sure of the exact time, but around 5:45 her body was starting to feel cold so the nurses took her from me.
In the next article I will explain what happened the next time I got pregnant since I now knew what to look out for. Just so you know, it’s a happy ending. I had another preemie, but now she is 11 years old and healthy, so there is hope for you too!