May 18th 2012, I was 24 weeks 6 days along and feeling yucky. I was planning dinner for that night with friends and just wasn’t feeling well. Our friends came over and the wife said you’re acting like you’re in labor! Being my first child I didn’t know what to expect to feel, and surely not this early. She insisted I go get checked at the hospital and I did. We live on a military base so we went to the Naval Hospital and made our way to Labor & Delivery. I was checked, monitored, and sent home with a midwife saying “you’re a first time mom, stop being over dramatic, you’re fine!” It was now May 19th when we got home and in bed. At around 2:00am, I was just extremely uncomfortable and needed to walk, so I quietly slipped out of bed and walked, and walked until 4:00am. At this point I was nauseated and felt like a warm bath would be best. I got in, and around 4:45am my water broke in the bathtub. I yelled for my husband, he helped me up, and as I stepped out my placenta fell to the flood with a thud. At this point I’m extremely freaked out, and confused and hurting! 
My husband rushed me to the hospital, and they were confused as to why I was back. I told them what happened and they immediately rushed me to triage and hooked me up. The could not find a heartbeat, could not seem to figure out what happened and told me “your baby has passed, when we can get a room you will have a stillborn.” I just laid in pain for 35 minutes waiting. Finally a doctor came in, explained some things and asked if we wanted to see our daughter or not. I said no, not right now and she said I need you to push, I was still contracting and had been and no one would give me any medicine to help the pain. I pushed once and the doctor started yelling at nurses to prepare an area she was alive. I was given 4 episiotomies and the doctor told me not to push and she went elbow deep to pull her little body out. She WAS alive, and taken. I had 26 stitches put in to repair the episiotomies and was left to wait with my husband. At 9:00am, after 3 hours of waiting we got word she was born, bruised badly, and was getting transferred to Wilmington to a NICU. She was 1lb 12ozs, and 14.5 inches. We spent 101 days in the NICU, went through a PDA ligation and feeding and breathing trouble. But our baby is alive! Katherine is an active, mobile, almost 10 month old. She crawls, has 2 teeth, and weighs 17 lbs! We are so thankful to God she survived. Beyond blessed for a wonderful NICU, and grateful that we both survived it. To this day they do not know what happened, or how she survived. Some things will never be figured out, and I will never know why she came early.
