I wish I had listened to my gut

[gakelley]

@scrawlor thank you for your condolences, however, unfortunately that is a big misconception. there are support boards of numerous moms whose water broke around the same gestation (some even earlier!) who went on to carry their babies to viability. the treatment is bed rest to slow the loss of fluid, as well as hydration, and even supplements of different electrolytes and amino acids have proven to help. this is why i want to raise more awareness for PPROM, especially Periviable PPROM.

 

[misswriter415]

@gakelley I’m so sorry for what happened. Your angel is in a better place now.

 

[gakelley]

@misswriter415 i’ve been trying to ignore this one for a while. please don’t tell parents who have experienced loss that their baby is “in a better place.” i’m catholic, so i know you mean as in Heaven, but the feeling still hits me of, how could a place be better than safe in my womb? or in my arms? how could God look at me and my fiancé and how excited we were; watch me do absolutely everything right with my pregnancy; watch us both working hard to make sure we have absolutely everything we need to prepare for our son; watch us both have support systems who were so ready and excited to be engaged in ours and our son’s life, and still take him away from us?

 

[misswriter415]

@gakelley Thank you for taking the time to reply to me. I’m sorry how my message came across. I have not considered that perspective and that’s on me. I’m really sorry for how I made you feel and I’m deeply appreciative that you explained it so I don’t unintentionally hurt people again.

 

[2ndprizepopple]

@gakelley I’m confused - this is what I’m reading so please help me if I’m wrong: you were given the option to induce labor and potentially the baby could have come out and survived, but you opted to wait it out and see if the baby would stay in, in hopes that the longer the baby was in the more viability it would have when it came out naturally? But then you were having labor pains & still stayed home?

I completely agree the ER did you wrong & should have done more examination & caught the issue right then and there. But I’m just so confused about everything after that: once you did know that the issue existed, it sounds like you were given options for intervention - are you saying you were too optimistic that the baby would survive without any interventions?

I’m not trying to be a jerk here at all, I’m genuinely confused… I just want clarity, I can’t really understand what other ways this could have gone with the possible interventions you mentioned? This is my worst nightmare - it’s every mom’s worst nightmare.

I’m so sorry you’re dealing with the worst nightmare. I’m crying for you and your baby and I hope you’re able to find any semblance of peace someday. Just remember you had the privilege to be his momma for every single little moment he was with you (in your womb and outside of it), and you’ll always be his momma. Nothing can ever change that.

 

[gakelley]

@2ndprizepopple thank you for your condolences. now, about the questions..

a baby cannot survive outside the womb at the stage i was at. i was not needlessly putting my son at risk, i was trying to save his life. the “option to induce labor” at the stage i was at was a guaranteed death sentence. no NICU anywhere would have been able to even begin to help him. the absolutely most advanced NICUs can’t help before 21 weeks, and even then they have to meet their weight requirement (which can be different from place to place). i was not privileged enough to have one of those advanced ones close to me.

i also am a first time mom, so i have never felt labor pains before. to me, it was more so a crampy feeling, not the “moaning and groaning and yelling” type of pain we usually see in moms. that is why i went home. because i was told that based on what they were seeing on the monitor, it just looked like my uterus was “irritable,” but not like i was in labor. this was directly because i had no fluid to expand out my uterus more, so my uterus was smaller than they usually use the monitors on.

if it had been caught and properly diagnosed at the first hospital while i still had fluid, i could have immediately started the PPROM regimen and possibly saved his life. but because of their negligence, he didn’t even get the chance to be one of the ones who made it. whenever i had gone to the second hospital when they diagnosed me, i explained the kind of work i do, and he told me to “absolutely not continue doing that,” but i had been for the previous week and a half. that was what caused my fluid to drain so fast, was the constant straining BECAUSE the other ER dismissed me and the doctor literally laughed at me, so i thought that i overreacted, and kept working.

the other way that this could have gone was if they diagnosed me and i stuck to the regimen, i could have gone on to carry him to 23, 26, even 32 weeks! he then would have been able to be treated. he would have had fluid to develop his lungs for longer. my baby was a fighter, he fought to stay alive as long as he did. there is no doubt in my mind that we could have made it to viability had the first hospital not screwed me over.

 

[2ndprizepopple]

@gakelley Thank you for taking the time to explain the answers to my questions. It makes more sense now. I’m still not sure why they would even offer the option to induce if there was no way to save him if birthed; could they have offered cerclage instead?

That’s just absolutely devastating, my heart breaks so hard. I remember at around 19/20 weeks, I started getting a lot of discharge and it freaked me out that I might be losing amniotic fluid, but my care team did an ultrasound just to ease my anxieties and showed me my fluid & cervix etc. on the monitor and how everything looked fine. Everyone should expect that level of care. I’m sick to my stomach at the callous recklessness of that first doctor you saw in the ER, and I truly hope you get justice for his complete failure to you & your baby.

And there’s no question it is malpractice: if it was an issue where not looking into it meant the worst case scenario would be that it didn’t resolve but it stayed the same without getting worse, that would be one thing (negligence). But in this situation the worst case scenario for him to not look into it meant death (which is gross negligence)… and all he needed to do was check. Why didn’t he? (Superiority complex? Misogyny? Plain malice?) I would want to ask him to his face why he couldn’t have just checked. Any decent doctor (or human) would have checked, if not simply for your peace of mind: if there’s truly nothing wrong and all you can do for a concerned pregnant woman is give her peace of mind, then you do exactly that. I want him to know his reckless disregard of your concern lead to the death of a precious child. I seriously hope he gets his comeuppance.

I hope you’re seeing a grief counselor, & I hope online subs like this can give you some sense of support. I’m so sorry for your hurt. I don’t have anything to say that could possibly help, I’m just so sad for you and your baby and I hope you find peace some day (and hope that you can at least find some small moment of peace every day while you work to get there).

 

[gakelley]

@2ndprizepopple of course! like i’ve said in other comments, my main goal here is spreading awareness for PPROM, especially Periviable PPROM, and that there are treatments for it. The reasoning for them offering to induce was because of the risk of infection for me, but i had absolutely no signs of infection, so i told them absolutely not. they could have offered cerclage, but my specific doctor didn’t for some reason and i didn’t have as much information as i do now to request it.

i’m so sorry that you know the fear that you came so far with your pregnancy and might have lost them anyways. it’s not a fun feeling, and it’s every mother’s worst nightmare when they’re pregnant. i’m glad that your doctor reassured you the way they did. i wish they had let me see my ultrasound, that way i could see a normal ultrasound even just one last time.