Asking here because so many of us are part of the PPROM club.
Tl;dr - experienced PPROM at 32w5d and was admitted to the hospital. About eight hours after my water breaking I started getting low cramps that felt like really really bad period cramps. Turns out they were contractions. I didn't know because a) I was a FTM who was told that contractions would be through your whole belly and b) I assumed my nurse would tell me if I was in labor. She had no clue I was in labor, so we didn't do any interventions to try to keep baby in for a little longer. Baby was born 5 hours after "cramping" started (13 hours after water breaking) and ended up with a 22 day NICU stay. Should my nurse have known I was in labor?
More details:
Overall, my pregnancy was seemingly textbook, other than that I had brown bleeding from week 6 through week 11. So, very unexpectedly, my water broke at 32w5d while on vacation. I wasn't contracting or anything, so we made the four hour drive to our home hospital. It was very uneventful - we even stopped at Target for Depends and Jimmy John's to grab a sub for the road.
Triage tested and indeed found that my water had broken. I was admitted to L&D around 10PM on a Friday night. They did not do a cervical check to reduce the risk of infection.
I was hooked up to monitors and basically told to stay in bed. Up to this point I still was very asymptomatic. I'd have a very short, light cramp every now and then, but I thought nothing of it. They said they would try to keep baby in until 34 weeks (so 8 more days), but didn't mention anything about how they'd do that other than just keeping me there on bed rest.
Around 1 AM, I started getting stronger cramps every 15 minutes or so. I put the pain level at a four, and this was the last time the nurse asked me my pain or the frequency of the cramps.
Well, they kept getting more painful (up to a 7 or 8) and more frequent. I tried to sleep, but was unsuccessful because of the pain. I kept moving around, tossing and turning, and every bit of me wanted to just MOVE, but the nurse kept coming in to adjust the monitors that were falling off of my belly and she basically told me to sit still so they could get good reads. I asked for Tylenol once and she didn't ask me my pain level, she just brought Tylenol. She said I was having very light contractions but didn't seem to think I was laboring.
Later on she even said that cramps can be normal, but they usually go away after two to three days which almost sent me straight to an epidural after being extremely committed to an unmedicated birth because they were so bad by then. It turns out I was minutes away from TRANSITION and this nurse still had no idea I was laboring! Meanwhile, as a first time mom, I'm there thinking that it was just part of PPROM or the lead up to labor and that I was in for torture once labor actually came.
Not once did I even consider that I was laboring based on my nurse's words and actions. I even let me husband keep sleeping, thinking that we'd be in for a really rough few days and that one of us should get some sleep if possible.
I went to the bathroom around 5AM (my husband was awake for this), stood up, got back to my bed, then felt like I needed to poop. Perhaps the only helpful thing that nurse said all night to me was that I shouldn't need to strain to poop. Well, I got back to the toilet and felt like straining, so I went back to bed and had two (what still felt like low) "cramps" that had me bending over the bed in pain. I got back in bed, doctor arrived a minute later at 5:45, I pushed six times, and baby was born at 5:58. I did get to hold her for literally two minutes, but then she was taken to the NICU.
So, in less than an hour I went from not knowing I was laboring to my baby being taken away from me. (You guys understand - it was the best thing for her, but was traumatic for me.)
Should my nurse have known that I was in labor? If she had, do you think we would've gotten steroids and magnesium, etc?
Tl;dr - experienced PPROM at 32w5d and was admitted to the hospital. About eight hours after my water breaking I started getting low cramps that felt like really really bad period cramps. Turns out they were contractions. I didn't know because a) I was a FTM who was told that contractions would be through your whole belly and b) I assumed my nurse would tell me if I was in labor. She had no clue I was in labor, so we didn't do any interventions to try to keep baby in for a little longer. Baby was born 5 hours after "cramping" started (13 hours after water breaking) and ended up with a 22 day NICU stay. Should my nurse have known I was in labor?
More details:
Overall, my pregnancy was seemingly textbook, other than that I had brown bleeding from week 6 through week 11. So, very unexpectedly, my water broke at 32w5d while on vacation. I wasn't contracting or anything, so we made the four hour drive to our home hospital. It was very uneventful - we even stopped at Target for Depends and Jimmy John's to grab a sub for the road.
Triage tested and indeed found that my water had broken. I was admitted to L&D around 10PM on a Friday night. They did not do a cervical check to reduce the risk of infection.
I was hooked up to monitors and basically told to stay in bed. Up to this point I still was very asymptomatic. I'd have a very short, light cramp every now and then, but I thought nothing of it. They said they would try to keep baby in until 34 weeks (so 8 more days), but didn't mention anything about how they'd do that other than just keeping me there on bed rest.
Around 1 AM, I started getting stronger cramps every 15 minutes or so. I put the pain level at a four, and this was the last time the nurse asked me my pain or the frequency of the cramps.
Well, they kept getting more painful (up to a 7 or 8) and more frequent. I tried to sleep, but was unsuccessful because of the pain. I kept moving around, tossing and turning, and every bit of me wanted to just MOVE, but the nurse kept coming in to adjust the monitors that were falling off of my belly and she basically told me to sit still so they could get good reads. I asked for Tylenol once and she didn't ask me my pain level, she just brought Tylenol. She said I was having very light contractions but didn't seem to think I was laboring.
Later on she even said that cramps can be normal, but they usually go away after two to three days which almost sent me straight to an epidural after being extremely committed to an unmedicated birth because they were so bad by then. It turns out I was minutes away from TRANSITION and this nurse still had no idea I was laboring! Meanwhile, as a first time mom, I'm there thinking that it was just part of PPROM or the lead up to labor and that I was in for torture once labor actually came.
Not once did I even consider that I was laboring based on my nurse's words and actions. I even let me husband keep sleeping, thinking that we'd be in for a really rough few days and that one of us should get some sleep if possible.
I went to the bathroom around 5AM (my husband was awake for this), stood up, got back to my bed, then felt like I needed to poop. Perhaps the only helpful thing that nurse said all night to me was that I shouldn't need to strain to poop. Well, I got back to the toilet and felt like straining, so I went back to bed and had two (what still felt like low) "cramps" that had me bending over the bed in pain. I got back in bed, doctor arrived a minute later at 5:45, I pushed six times, and baby was born at 5:58. I did get to hold her for literally two minutes, but then she was taken to the NICU.
So, in less than an hour I went from not knowing I was laboring to my baby being taken away from me. (You guys understand - it was the best thing for her, but was traumatic for me.)
Should my nurse have known that I was in labor? If she had, do you think we would've gotten steroids and magnesium, etc?
Little man was in the NICU/SCN for 49 days but is now a thriving 5mo old. Just goes to show, labor doesn’t always just feel like the books say!