Hospital wants to send me home after PPROM. I don’t want to go. Help.

[CatsEye99]

Posting for traffic. My waters broke at home and were bright red, and I was 26 weeks with DCDA twins. I called an ambulance and was rushed to hospital where I had a huge gush of red fluid. I was counselled about preterm birth and given steroid injections. I saw a neonatal doctor who stated the most important thing was to deliver at a hospital with NICU cots.

Despite severe agonising pain, a week has passed and I haven’t given birth. Twins aren’t distressed and my observations are fine.

However I feel incredibly unwell. I keep burning hot and turning red but my temp is not raised. I feel like I have the flu or another illness. I have no energy and can barely move due to pain. Codeine won’t touch it. A midwife told me to have a hot bath which I am sure is contraindicated.

The staff want to send me home. I have stated I do not want to go home due to me living an hour from the hospital and the risk of infection, cord compression, preterm delivery and stillbirth. I do not want to lose my babies. I want to remain in the unit with NICU like the doctor advised.

Can anyone give me any advice? I can’t find any info on this anywhere and feel like the staff are fobbing me off.

Congratulations on all your hard work, and on having your little ones. I hope everything runs much smoother for you from here on out.

How was your night Cats? 💗

Thank you everyone.

Twin 1 is doing well. He is on oxygen but not ventilated and is moving and crying.

Twin 2 is doing okay. She is ventilated but has had it recuced.

I saw the consultant yesterday who talked thrpugh the birth to me. They had made a mistake, twin 1s waters were in tact he just had lowwr fluid it was twin 2 who had broken the waters. When they opened mw up they found a huge blood clot behind thw placenta which had causes a placental abruption which is why she was distressed.

She was born with almost no heart rate and it took almost an hour to revive her and she has had a rocky start but hopefully is still doing well.

Congratulations Cat. How are the babies being fed at the moment?

Oh the consultant told me that if I had gone home I wouldve bled to death within minutes and all of us wouldn't have pulled through.

DP is really angry that they tried to send us home and we've both said so to the consultant who is encouraging us to voice this because she said they need to know about such matters.

They have a drip. Twin 1 has had some expressed breast milk

That must be awful to hear. I think you should definitely complain when you have the strength. It’s reasurring to hear they are able to reduce the ventilation but these things can be rocky. Ventilation is amazing but comes with its own problems. I’m not trying to scare but I felt more ready when armed with facts. It will be hour by hour for a while now but everything sounds so positive.

That is absolutely shocking. Please do follow it up. Clearly the midwives need to learn from your horrific experience so it doesn't happen to anyone else.

Sending best wishes for you all.

Apologies if it's already been suggested, but ask your partner or mum to print this thread out for future reference (for complaint) just in case it gets deleted for any reason.
Congratulations on your babies arrival and managing to express

From the bottom of my heart, please please don’t let this drop. Follow the consultant’s advice - scream about this from the bloody rooftops. The consultant knows there are problems but nothing will happen without “evidence” (ie you).

I can promise you that they need you to complain loudly about this.

It’s absolutely gut wrenching that you’ve been through what you have. To an extent you can understand mistakes - the team are only human. But the refusal to listen to you and the utter incompetency is unforgivable.

You are an absolute rock.

Your babies are lucky to have such strong parents

I’m really angry on your behalf. A lot of mistakes have been made.

I really hope you all make a full recovery.

To be fair to the hospital, it was monday morning when they were talkin about discharging you , with very regular monitoring, and not until sunday morning when you were delivered of the babies. I think it is a little disingenuous to believe that no alarm bells would have been raised by you or your midwife when things took a turn for the worse in the intervenin period.

Congratulations to you and your husband, and best of luck for your tiny premsxx

I'm so please to see your update this morning. You've got a pair of little warriors there

I hope your little girl continues to progress well, every hour can bring changes and I hope she goes from strength to strength. Have you managed to sleep?

Words fail me at the thought of what could have happened had you not been so strong about staying in OP. I think the hospital need to review your care and make some changes, in the hope that no-one else ever finds themselves in your position.

Hope you'll all be strong enough soon to cuddle those twins.

Congratulations and so sorry for the trauma you went through. I got a chill in my heart reading your updates. When you have all recovered well in a few months please pursue this further. You and your babies are superstars. Many many congrats!

Thank god for people like you who speak up when they know something is wrong and stand their ground. This could have been a massive tragedy

Congratulations on your twins! You’ve been a fantastic mummy fighting for them to get the best possible start. Lots of love sent for you all.

Congratulations.
I know every story is different and I wouldn't want to pretend it was a fun 9 weeks but I had my twins at 29 weeks. They were born by crash section following a placental abruption and with very very low apgar scores. They were 2lbs 4oz and 2lb 5oz. They came off ventilation onto CPAP and then we're off that too within 36 hours. They were in hospital altogether for nine weeks and whilst there were some ups and downs the NICU staff were unrelentingly supportive.
Yours have had steroids and are fantastic weights for 27/28 weekers. The fact they are both improving is great news.
Please make time for yourself to rest and recover properly. You have had a traumatic time both mentally and physically so take time to rest, eat properly and accept all offers of help! You will be much more able to help your babies if you are in a good position yourself. Wishing the best for all of you.

You're doing well to be expressing and getting so much milk after such a traumatic delivery. I had a section at full term with sepsis and PPH and what I was getting at the 24hr point couldn't even be called drops it was so little, more like milk dust. It was a good 7-10 days before I had the physical resources for actual milk.

CatsEye99 Try and look after yourself as much as you can. You have been through a very traumatic experience and you will be at risk for PTSD. Get as much support as you can. Try to get counselling if you can. Prioritise yourself as well as the babies.

You have been through a very traumatic experience and you will be at risk for PTSD. Get as much support as you can. Try to get counselling if you can

The majority of people who go through a traumatic incident deal with it well and don’t go onto develop PTSD. Let’s not frighten OP, please.

Therapy after a traumatic incident when the person hasn’t developed PTSD has been shown to be damaging to the natural healing process and is why sending ‘crisis therapists’ into disaster zones is no longer recommended. People have been dealing with tough life events for hundreds of thousands of years. The support is there if it goes awry and someone does develop PTSD, which is a real and very difficult condition, but it’s bandied around constantly on here as if nobody is capable of dealing with adverse events on their own. Let’s not over medicalise people’s natural human responses to painful events, it helps nobody, least of all OP.

Thinking of you OP!

I have only just found this thread and I’m so relieved that things have turned out as they have. Congratulations on your beautiful babies. They are in for a tough journey but they sound like they’re already little fighters and what a great mom they have to see them through it x x

I hope you are all doing well; you're in my thoughts (with special strength vibes for twin 2).

Just to say, you have every right to request a debrief of your birthing experience (and the lead-up to that). Although the poster above is right to say that it hasn't been shown to avert PTSD, it equally doesn't cause it -- and you may feel that you would like to better understand what went wrong, both for your own information/understanding and so that the hospital can address any mistakes it may have made and potentially avoid similar mistakes being made in future. (This is the Cochrane review on debriefing after birth: www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD007194.pub2/full) It's a standard service offered by all hospitals, but you have to ask specifically. Somebody trained and knowledgeable will go through all of your birth notes etc with you and talk it through.