23Weeks!
Mar
22
Today I am 23 weeks pregnant! I am starting to feel uncomfortable and I have the same pain on my upper right side in the area that I started to have with Sariah at 7 months. When I was pregnant with her my doctor thought there was something wrong with my galbladder and sent me to the hospital for an ultrasound. It turned out that everything was fine with my galbladder and the pain went away soon after she was born. I was told afterwards that the pain was caused by the baby stretching my ligaments and it will probably get worse with each pregnancy.
One interesting fact about being 23 weeks is that it is the official week that babies are considered viable outside the womb. Of course it will mean a long hospitialization and possible disabilities and other problems. I found a website about Preemie stories of babies born at 23 weeks. It would be so hard to have a baby that premature but it is also comforting to know that if I were to go into early labour that my baby could have a good chance at survival.
March 22nd, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Wow. I had a preemie born a little over 34w and she had a lot of trouble. I can’t imagine the troubles that would lie ahead for a baby born sooner than that.
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October 3rd, 2007 at 9:32 am
my daughter was born at 23 weeks,she weighed 1lb 3oz and only had a 20% chances of survival and only 1% chance each day after,if i had gone to 24 weeks then her chances would have jumped to 50% chance, a week can make a lot of difference inside but at a week old outside she still only had 27% chance.at first she was see through and so tiny it was a really tough and scary time but fortunately i was one of the lucky ones and she came home after 16 weeks and it was on my birthday 4 days before her due date which is rare as prem babies that prem dont usually leave until after their due date. it was heart breaking how many i seen come and then be gone the next day and you instinctively knew why but it was something i tried not to acknowledge cause i was afraid it would be me next.many a times she had transfusions,antibiotics,apneoas(where they forget to breath)which they used to give her caffine to keep her stimulated she now has scares on her hands from all the drips as she always had one in for emergancies but they had to change them to stop germs or because of her veins. she actually breathed for the first hour on her own but then needed to be ventilated and gragually went onto the cpap which looks like a ventilator but it gives a flow of oxygen and she done the breathing but went back on to the ventilator several times when she got tired and had to be sedated so she could regain her strength.fortunalely they gave me a room especially for parents in this situation and out of the 16 weeks i never stayed there about 3 times, i couldnt leave her and wanted to do everything and the nurses tought me and eventually done most of her changes myself ( if u can call changing a piece of cotten wool that) cleaning her and eventually medication e.g vitamins caffine (as id have to do it at home but obviously under supervision the amount got checked by 2 nurses before i could give it). each time she was fed by tube it had to be checked it was in her stomach,if the fluid drawn out made special blue paper pink it was fine. everything was so scary and i found myself asking questions over and over but they didnt care they just told u the truth and tried to reasure us.when i eventually brought her home i had to have a paramedic come round to show me how to resusitate her as very prem babies can stop breathing, she constantly wore an apneoa moniter to detect it and was on oxygen for 12 months after coming home.within about 3 weeks of being home she had stopped breathing at first i ran around screaming like an headless chicken until my dad shouted at me in his panic and said “carrie u know what to do”,which sent meinto overdrive and felt like i wasnt me until the ambulance arrived,it turnt out she had bronculitus and her lungs couldnt cope with the infection due to having cronic lungs (hence the oxygen)whilst in hospital she kept stopping breathing constantly and was put on a ventilator and antibiotics, funnily enough she’d been seen by the doctor that day as i was worried but her chest sounded fine, but with her lungs being the way they were it hit her like a ton of bricks within 3-4 hours. she is 6 and a half now and to look at her you wouldnt think she’d been through what she has.shes been extremely lucky to have no difficulties whatsoever apart from wearing glasses for short sighted but me and all my family do and shortsighted can be hereditry.its funny though cause she has so much strength and will run into anything and it doesnt faze her one bit she even surprizes us, now though i look back and as real as it was, being here today its hard to think what we went through was real and it turns my stomach to think just how many times we lost her and got her back and i wouldnt want anyone to go through the same as i did.
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