My DD, Emily, was born at 23w6d on 10 Apr 11.

I was at home and felt a pressure in there. I reached to feel around and felt something hanging out of my body. I called the on call dr and she didn't sound concerned so DH and I took a nap since I had to work a 12hr shift that night. When I woke up, it happened again in the shower. At that point I woke up DH and told him we had to go to the hospital. We hemmed and hawed for a minute but during that thinking I started having contractions.

Initially, we went to the wrong hospital. There are two in my town and only one of them has a L&D. I didn't know that bc I was too early to have even looked into hospitals yet. They did an u/s and that was when the panic set in. And I mean panic, the poor ER dr. But they were amazing. They told me my bag of waters was hanging in my vaginal canal, I was 5cm dilated and 90% effaced, all while never realizing I had been contracting for almost 3 hrs. They loaded me into an ambulance to go to the correct hospital where I was only there long enough to get my first round of steroids.

After an hour long ambulance ride to Sac, I was admitted to high risk maternity where they tried to slow my labor. After about 7 hrs after first noticing something was wrong, my contractions weren't even 30 sec apart and they decided that they couldn't stop my labor and Emme was coming. She was born at 0203 on 10 Apr.

 

We spent 112 days in the NICU and ran the gamut. We were on a vent for 1 month, had PDA ligation, on the bubble CPAP for almost 3 months, and then the cannula for the last week. We never had any feeding issues. Emme contracted 3 separate infections and was treated with antibiotics. Our biggest hurdle was her very immature lungs. I was never able to get the second round of steroids.

Emme is now almost 7 months old, 3 months adjusted. She is thriving! She does some things on a 3 month level and some things on a 6 month level. She is our miracle baby.

I was diagnosed as having IC. I had a textbook pregnancy right up until the day I went into labor. They are not sure why they couldn't stop my PTL. They thought maybe an infection but everything was clear.

I'm sorry this got so long. I actually cried a little typing out Emily's birth story. Just when I thought I had "dealt" with it all :)