On Tuesday July 15th, Denyse had a regular checkup with her midwife Lindsay and had the scheduled week-22 ultrasound. From this, they estimated Aidan to be just under 1 pound, at a weight of 15 ounces. This was a little small for 22 weeks, and Aidan had always measured about 1 week smaller than average, going all they way back to his 6-week ultrasound. Everything was going well and we had just recently made reservations to take a trip to Victoria, BC at the end of August. Denyse called this a babymoon.
The weekend of July 19-20 was the MS Ride, a cycling fundraiser for the Multiple Scleroses Society. I was all signed up, had picked up my ride packet, and was ready to ride the 100-mile century starting in Sweet Home, Oregon early Saturday morning. Denyse was going to spend the day with her mom in Albany, and come out and meet me at one or two of the rest stops. We were all backed up Friday night, and had the alarm clock set to get up at 5am.
At 2:45am, Denyse woke me up with a somewhat paniced voice, "Rick, something is wrong." She got up to go to the bathroom, and (we figured out later) her water broke. After waking me up, she felt the sensation of more liquid coming out, and she went back to the bathroom.
At first, we were a little confused about what had just happened, and weren't sure who to call. We searched trough our files and found some paperwork from the midwives office. Under "Call the hospital if...", was listed, "you've had a sudden discharge of clear liquid". Denyse called her midwife's office and Lindsay happened to be on call at the hospital. She told us to come in right away.
They admitted Denyse into the maternity triage room. Our hope was that there was some sort of simple explaination for what was happening, and that everything was fine and we'd be sent home. I checked the clock and it was 3:30am, so I even had plenty of time to make it to Sweet Home by 7am.
A nurse came in to do an amniotic fluid test with what looked like chemistry class litmus paper. I'll never forget her words and the tone of her voice. "It's amniotic fluid", she said with a tone somewhere between sadness and sympathy.
We were moved from the triage room to room 17 and waited for labor to start. Over the next few hours, we met with the perinatologist, and then the neonatologist. Our perinatologist (the doctor specializing in very high-risk pregnancies) was Dr Santosh Pandipati. The first words from him were something like, "This is not good." He told us in most cases when the water breaks, that labor will begin sometime in the first 24 - 48 hours, and that if this happens, they would not stop the labor, because it would probably mean that Denyse had an infection. Infection is one of the leading causes of water breaking, and could be very harmful to Denyse. Babies at 22 weeks are not viable, and cannot survive, so if Denyse went into labor, we would lose the baby. This was very upsetting to hear.
Next we met with Dr Rebecca Mischel, the neonatologist. She gave us the grim statistics of survival rates, and disabilities of premature babies born before week 24, and in week 24, 25, and 26. This was a very upsetting discussion, and Denyse was struggling to hold back the tears. The recommendation by most of the hospital staff was to *not* attempt to save the baby prior to week 25. The level and severity of disabilities was just too high, and the quality of life for the baby was not good. After seeing this data, we were supposed to think about what we wanted the hospital to do in the event Denyse went into labor, and needed to decide at what point we wanted them to try to save the baby. Talk about a gut-wrenching discussion to have. Just 12 hours earlier, everything was going perfectly, and now we are trying to decide when to save our baby.
They gave Denyse some antibiotics (Amoxicilin) and took her temperature every hour to watch for infection.
Denyse spent all of Saturday and Saturday night in the hospital. Hours passed, and no signs of labor, and no signs of infection. Sunday came, and everything was still stable. Since they could not save the baby if Denyse went into labor, they discharged Denyse from the hospital. Sunday, July 20 was 22 weeks, 2 days. The hope was to be on bedrest for 3 weeks at home, and then come back to the hospital at 25 weeks. Dr Pandipati called this a reasonable plan.
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