the one where her water breaks…
It was Friday night. It had been a long school day, but as I walked out I decided I would deal with everything on Monday. Bryan was working on his food truck at an event in downtown Dallas and I was laying in bed watching Friends on Netflix.
I was 22 weeks and 5 days pregnant.
The rest of this post might be TMI so read at your own discretion.
I can still remember so much of that evening. Like any pregnant person, I had to pee about every thirty minutes. As I stood up to walk to the restroom I had the feeling like I was peeing everywhere but couldn’t control my bladder! I had just finished antibiotics for a bladder infection so my first thought was that it had returned. After a few minutes of panic, I called the on call doctor. Luckily, my OB was the one on call. She told me to give it about thirty minutes and then call if the leaking hadn’t stopped. After another big gush about ten minutes later, I called again. This time she told me to come in so we could rule out my water breaking. Wait. What?? That thought had not even crossed my mind. I called my mom crying and she came and took me to the hospital. Bryan took an uber from downtown to the hospital and by 7pm we had figured out that that was exactly what had happened.
When she told me, my doctor sat down on the side of my bed and just looked at me and said, “this sucks.” And it did. And it still does. She explained how I would be on strict horizontal bed rest until further notice, laying flat on my back, and my first milestone was 24 weeks. “Viability” is 24 weeks, but the goal was to make it until 34 weeks. That evening and the next day, Bryan and I began to settle into the hospital and prepared for the long haul…
As I write it all down, it strikes me how factual it all seems. But the only thing I felt was sheer panic. And anger. These feelings still linger, hanging over my head in everything I do. Panic and anger, even long after the danger is gone. Funny how our brains work, isn’t it?
We would find out later that what happened to me was called preterm premature rupture of membranes or PPROM. There is very little information about how or why this happens and there is no way to predict or try to prevent it until it’s happened to you before. So now we know. And we pray that it never happens again.
More about our hospital bed rest soon…
