The bad news.
Shortly after publishing the last blog post, my water broke. That night we went to bed still in awe of having gotten through another transfusion and somewhat lulled into dreaming it would all work out. Then I woke up to my water breaking and in an instant everything changed.
We flew to the hospital, trying hard to avoid the potholes along the way. Tom ran a red light. Our doctor quickly confirmed the diagnosis: pPROM (preterm premature rupture of membranes). Julia was 23 weeks 2 days gestation - a period of time where some hospitals wouldn’t even try to save her. Luckily, ours would. Even more luckily, they didn't have to.
I was immediately admitted, hooked up to IV, pumped with antibiotics, consulted by the NICU team (same NICU doctors as with William, can you believe it?), anesthesia consults, tons of MFMs, residents, fellows. We couldn’t think straight. We were told the odds of survival were not great, only ~20% of babies survive at that gestation, not to mention that our baby had an underlying disease. It’s impossible to really explain how it felt. We had come so far to protect her from the anemia and now we were faced with losing her to prematurity. Labor usually occurs within 24 hours of your water breaking. So we waited. I laid on my hospital bed and didn’t move.
I never went into labor.
I’ll spare you all the details - but things are looking much better than last week. I have been stable for the last 5 days. We are almost 25 weeks, where her chance at surviving birth has now jumped up to ~70%. With each day, she grows larger but she also grows more anemic. Our immediate concern is infection and premature birth. But she will need another transfusion in ~2 weeks, so that will be a huge hurdle.
One day at a time. We are trying to harness the power of positive thinking. We've done enough negative thinking and don't have the capacity for it anymore.
Please be thinking of Julia, she's so strong, more updates to come,
Liz and Tom
