Premature DC1 - what was your experience second time round?

[clairesparkle]

I am starting to think about maybe trying for a second DC. My DS is coming up to his first birthday, and I've been thinking alot about his arrival. He has born at 33 wks+6 days after my waters broke at 33wks when we were visiting friends 300 miles from home. Whilst I coped with it all (unexpected labour, no hospital bag, DS staying on friends' sofa whilst I was in hosp, being transferred home by ambulance and another 2 weeks on SCBU) at the time, thinking about it now really upsets me. I had tests done, but there was no reason they found for my waters breaking early. I am really worried about it happening again, and wondered if anyone else had had a premmie the first time round who either went on to have a term baby or had another early one second time round.. (Ideally the term option to set my mind at rest!!)

A small bump for you. DD wasn't as premature as your DS - born at 36/2, so hardly prem at all. I fully expected this pregnancy to go the same way and have been thinking could go into labour at any minute since about 32weeks!
37 weeks today. Now qualify for home birth, and am thinking this one may hang on in there a bit longer yet!
It is a worry though, especially for second pregnancy when you are expecting it to happen...but in my case this time needn't have wasted the energy.

My daughter was born at just 36 weeks. Again not as premature as your DS. However I did find it all very traumatic as everything happened so quickly and she was very poorly for the 1st month (SCBU for 1st 2 weeks, then children's ward for another 2 weeks).
It put me off having another baby for 7 years!

However I now have a 4 week old baby boy who was born by c-section at 39 weeks as he was breech.I did have threatened early labour at 34 weeks but was given steroids & drugs to delay this and really closely monitored throughout my pregnancy.

One thing which helped me enormously was a debriefing about my daughters birth whilst I was pregnant with my baby boy as I was terrified of it all happening again. The debriefing (even though 7 years later), really helped me to come to terms with why I felt so traumatised. It sounds like this would help you.

My boys were born at 28w+4, and when i got pregnant with DD i was positive that she was going to come early.I was so paranoid and petrified that i had my bags packed by 24 weeks and i had steroid injections at 28 weeks, just in case.

Well DD arrived at 39+2. And looking back i can see how totally different that pregnancy was to my boys. My boys weighed 2lb 4oz and 2lb 14oz respectively - dd was 10lb 2oz!! So completely the other extreme.

Just because it's happened once, it really doesn't mean that it's going to happen again. Yes there is a very slight increased risk, but it's not much, honestly.

I'm now 29+4 with another baby, and the difference in this pregnancy to the last is so startling - i'm so much more relaxed because i know now that whatever happens will happen, and it's all out of my control anyway.

Good luck x