Amanda A’s Story

Hello, I never thought I would be writing this. As a teenager I thought I would just be a mom and never deal with any struggle to become one, but here I am.

When I met my husband and talked about having kids, we didn’t factor in the 2 years it would take to get pregnant with our first. In April of 2023, we found out I was pregnant and announced it on Easter to the family. Everything was going amazing until 16 weeks, I had my appointment with my obgyn and everything looked great. The next day, July 1st, my water broke and I had no idea until 2 hours later when I saw a bunch of blood. We rushed around to 3 different er that day, my baby girl still had a heartbeat, but no fluid. No one knew why and no one bothered to know. My husband and I were told many times to terminate, but after many facebook groups and hearing other stories similar we kept fighting. I got to our first goal, 20 weeks, and I am booked for a long stay at the hospital. 4 weeks later, 24 weeks and 6 days, I delivered my baby and she lived for 1 hour and 15 minutes. She died in her daddy’s arms before I got to meet her.

In Nov, we started to test for ovulation so we had a couple of months to get a baseline and idea when in the cycle it occurred because we want to start in January. I never ovulated, but at the end of the month I started to get nauseous. I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. It was the scariest, but happiest time as the doctors still thought it was a one time occurrence. Everything was going great, we opted into doing weekly cervical checks at 16-20 weeks.

My first check, I measured at 3.6 cm. At 17 weeks, I was told I shortened to 2.4cm and looked like I was about 30-32 weeks. I was rushed to get an urgent cervical stitch and was diagnosed with incompetent cervix. At 21 weeks and a day, I felt I had to pass a blood clot, so I rushed to the ER and when waiting for the doctor to see me I started to get contractions in my back. The doctor came and checked that so-called blood clot was my second daughter’s feet and some of the water sack. I was given a room and brought in for observation as I was still having contractions.

The doctor was trying to find the stitch I had in place, but could not find it with her hand or using any instruments. She gave me 2 options, she can try and push the baby in and cut the stitch with the chance of the water breaking and possibly being able to hold on like I did with the first or I can leave it in and possibly hurt her and give her no chance of survival if we didn’t try as the stitch could choke her later on and cause more damage to myself.

We opted on the first option as she went in and my water broke and she still couldn’t find this stitch. I did go into labor 30 mins later and she did get stuck. I felt her moving a bit between my legs and the staff left to get the OR ready. I had my husband go get the doctor as I felt the need to push again. Almost exactly 23 years apart, my daughter 8:52pm and me at 9:02pm, we now share a birthday. The next day, I was told by my obgyn my only option was having a surrogate, but that was not an option for me. I found that night a surgery that helped other women like me called a transabdominal cerclage.

In July, I got a pre pregnancy tac in place and was given the okay in Aug to start trying again. Now we are currently pregnant again with our double rainbow hoping to make it to our 3rd trimester.