25 Week Preemie Pictures

This post is extremely personal for me.  I gave birth to twin girls at only 25 weeks pregnant on January 24, 2009.  I just opened up an Online album of some pictures that I stored away on Photobucket in 2010, and decided that it was time to share them.

Note: I am OK with you using pictures from this post ONLY if you write to me and ask permission first.  I will likely say yes to any legitimate request.  Please respect this one request as these are very personal pictures.

Celeste the day after birth at 25 weeks

On January 23, I went into premature labor.  I didn’t recognize at first that this was happening.  I started bleeding a bit at around 5 pm.  When my husband came home from work only a little bit later I told him about it and we went to the local hospital.  The doctor came in, checked me out, and told me that I was already dilating!

Celeste A Few Weeks After Birth

I was rushed to UCSF by ambulance.  They tried really hard to stop my labor at UCSF, but only a few hours later I was in full blown labor and dilated to 7 cm.  A Neonatologist came into my room and explained that our girls only had a 60% chance to live, and that if they did live, they then had a 30% chance of having neurological problems and/or brain damage.

Not only was I in labor, but I was facing this grim and shocking reality.  My husband and I sobbed and held each other.

I was whisked off to the operating room and had a c-section.  I wasn’t able to see what was going on, but my husband saw our two tiny 1lb. 6oz. baby girls taken from my body and rushed immediately from the room and onto ventilators.

Her Nurse Holding Her Up

One of our daughters, Nova Rae, died at only 7 days old from sepsis, in our hands on a table.  Our other daughter almost died repeatedly over the next few months.

I stayed in a motel down the street from UCSF by myself for a full month in order to be able to hold her every day.  Then, I slept in a dormitory room for mothers, on a different floor of the hospital, where the kids dying of cancer were kept.  Every morning I got up and walked down the hall full of bald, dying children and their crying parents and made my way up to the elevator.

Dad and Older Brother

My daughter, Celeste Marie was on a ventilator for the first two months of her life.  She had multiple blood transfusions.  Here brain bled a bit in an area related to motor skills.  Her breathing and rate rate regularly fell to zero, which caused nurses to run over and “stim” her into breathing again.  Each time this would happen her monitor would flash and alarms would go off.  I heard that alarm in my head for more than a year after bringing her home.

Coming Home

Today, she is a little over two years old.  Her speech and cognitive abilities are completely normal.  Her physical development has been mostly normal, except that she was delayed in walking.  She was 20 months “adjusted” age when she finally walked, and still has a “wobble” and a slight imbalance.  Her left foot has been stiffer than her right since birth.

So basically, she has very slight cerebral palsy which isn’t bad enough to classify her as “disabled”.  Thank you God.