Angel My Angel

Angel0902 - 08:31am Nov 4, 2011 EST

Hi my name is Edith. I had a premature baby boy 25 weeks gestation, he was born on September 02, 2011 and unfortunately passed away on September 23rd. This was me and my husbands first baby.. When I was still pregnant on a Thursday night before I went to bed I noticed some mucus with a little bit of blood in it. I didn't think about it twice, me and my husband went straight to the emergency room. They told me I had no urine infection and it seemed like I wasn't bleeding anymore and just sent me home, the nurse told me that this was normal. The next morning I woke up and I was still bleeding just a bit. I called back and they told me that I didn't have to go in if that night before they told me that it was normal. Just that Sunday I didn't bleed but they kept telling me that it was normal. Finally on Wednesday morning I woke up to use the restroom and it just seemed like I was on my period, I called the doctors and they told me I didn't have to go in but I wasn't so sure so I went to the emergency room that morning. When they checked me the nurse was able to touch my bag of water and I was 4-5 centimeters dilated. They immediately flew me to a near hospital were they had a NICU. My bag of water never broke, it came out of me twice. After the second time the doctor decided to break my bag because since the bag had already been out, there was a 99% chance the baby was going to get an infection. I got the steroid shots but I was 4 hours away from the 48 hours I needed for the medicine. He was born via c-section on Friday morning. He was doing so good the first week or so we thought, he had a grade 2 head bleed the day after he was born but the doctors didn't find it on that ultrasound until the next one a week later. By then he had a severe grade 4 on one side and a 3 on the other. My son went through so much those 21 days. He wouldn't blink, he would get eye drops and wouldn't even flinch, he had to go through surgery, he had to use different ventilators, each day he needed more and more help breathing. He scared us a couple of times when his oxygen levels and heart rate would drop unexpected, his blood pressure was always too high or too low, he had to go on a couple of medication due to the blood pressure and the doctors told us that most likely he wouldn't be able to hear sooner or later due to the medicine, he needed a shunt due to hydrocephalus, but the shunt was going to be connected to his heart instead of his belly because of his surgery in his stomach and most likely he was going to also have problems with his heart due to the shunt. He had what the doctors believed were seizures, he spent about 4-5 days without moving at all, the doctors said he was most likely going to have cerebral palsy, he was most likely not going to be able to eat on his on or ever be off the ventilator. My son was so brave to go through all that but unfortunately it was too much for him.. He passed away on my chest. Its so hard to sleep at night, to be alone, for people to ask us about what happened, to look at all his stuff, clothes, toys, blankets he will never use, his pictures, go see him at his grave, to think that only 6 more weeks and my son would of been here with me, to see the baby sections in the stores, to see babies, to hear what people are capable of doing to their children. Putting his stuff away just feels like were forgetting about him. I never thought that for his first Halloween I was going to have to take his costume and his candies to his grave. His first Christmas take his gifts to his grave, even when he was in the NICU it never crossed my mind. As my due date approaches and my baby shower date gets closer I can't stop and think what if. Maybe I could of done something to prevent my baby from being born too soon. All of this guilt is just eating me alive. Now that I look back I had symptoms of a premature birth I just didn't know what those symptoms were, I had the pelvic pressure, a lot of mucus, and the bleeding. I feel like all of this could of been prevented. I just didn't know what premature birth is and how dangerous it is.. Now I just want my son back..