Our Journey Begins

My husband and I had been married 5 years before we were blessed with being pregnant. For anyone who has known me more than 5 minutes, you know I am a Type A personality. Due to this, I immediately starting reading pregnancy and baby books to make sure I was following all the 'rules' for a healthy pregnancy. I stopped eating lunch meat because of listeria risk, didn't drink any caffeine, modified my exercise plan and refused to go through the radiation emitting scanner machines at the airport. I worried about aches and pains and (although miserable) was happy to have morning (or all day) sickness because the studies showed a decreased risk for miscarriage with bad morning sickness.

I started to wonder what work would do without me when I went on maternity leave and more importantly what I would do without work! I worried I would have a baby who cries all night long so I couldn't get sleep or whether labor would be horrible. When I finally reached my second trimester I was able to breathe a sign of relief that the miscarriage risk was now low and we told our families about our happy news. A few weeks later we learned we were having a boy and we started searching for the perfect baby boy names.

The day our journey began was a day like any other. I went to work and was taking a break by people watching at Starbucks with one of my closest friends. I was almost 20 weeks pregnant. While walking back to work from Starbucks, I felt a gush of fluid that I thought was urine. I was annoyed that I was going to be one of those women who face incontinence while pregnant. However, I noted that the fluid didn't smell like urine. The friend I was with had recently had a baby and urged me to call my doctor. I realized later that her advice probably saved my baby's life.

The labor and delivery nurse wasn't all that worried about the fluid and told me to wait an hour, then call back if I had any other gushes. I called an hour later to let them know I thought everything was fine, but a new nurse instructed me to come in to get checked just in case. I wasn't too worried, but called my mom to take me to the hospital. We stopped at McDonalds to get some food and I spent most of the drive there talking to another of my pregnant friends. It really just seemed like a formality to get checked out. My husband had just left on a trip that I purchased for his birthday to Las Vegas with his friends and I didn't even bother calling him to let him know we were going to the hospital.

Once there, the nurses checked to see if I was in early labor and didn't see anything unusual. They let me know it was probably a bladder issue and to try Kegel exercises. Not the best news, but not life threatening either. We were all set to leave when the nurse said she would check the baby's heartrate really quick before I was discharged. She couldn't find a small heart rate monitor and announced I would be getting a bonus ultrasound since there was an ultrasound machine available. My mom and I were excited to get a glimpse of the baby, who we had named Landon.

The nurse put the ultrasound goop on my stomach and started scanning. However, this ultrasound was different than others I had had. It started the same with the nurse pointing out the baby's strong heartrate, but then she got quiet. She announced she was going to get a doctor to double check something. A few minutes later a resident came in and started to scan the baby again. I knew something was wrong by how silent she was as she scanned. I could feel my panic rising as I kept looking at my mom while waiting for the the doctor to tell us what she saw that was wrong. She then said the words that have dictated my life and my family's lives since then, 'I see no amniotic fluid around the baby, your water must have broken.'

I wasn't sure what that meant for my baby, but could see from the doctor's face it was bad. She started talking about infection risk and the fact that at 19 weeks the baby wasn't viable. She said I would probably go into labor in the next few days, but that she recommended I induce that night to avoid a possible life-threatening infection. I didn't understand, I saw my baby's strong heartrate and could feel him move in me. I asked if the baby would eventually die within me because of the lack of fluid and she admitted that if I didn't go into labor or get an infection, the baby could live inside me indefinitely. The problem would come from the fact that amniotic fluid is needed for lung development and 19 weeks happened to be smack in the middle of a crucial lung growth period. She said that even if I made it to term, the baby only had a 5% chance of having enough lung development to survive.

I was devastated and knew with absolute certainty that I couldn't deliver my baby that night and be sane. I also knew that as long as my baby had a heartbeat and was not suffering, I couldn't actively do something to terminate him. So I told the doctor, I would wait until my body and God decided it was time for my baby to come. I called my husband and told him the heartbreaking news and my decision and began the fight for mine and my baby's lives.