A background, part II

I was due to give birth on January 19th.



2 days before Christmas, I noticed that the contractions I had been feeling were stronger and slightly painful. They were irregular though, and subsided after a few hours.



3 days after Christmas, I woke up around 3 AM to go to the bathroom. It was a weird, painful sort of experience, but I didn't think too much of it - pregnancy had been full of weird, painful experiences, so I went back to bed. Around 7:30 AM, I woke up with painful contractions. They were extremely irregular, but fairly strong, so I had a feeling that I wasn't going to make it to my due date. I decided to start getting things ready while I waited for them to come a bit faster and more regularly.



An hour and a half later, I found myself on my hands and knees, calling 911. The contractions were still irregular, but they were extremely painful, and all of the sudden I could feel the baby trying to crown. 10 minutes later, I was being raced to the hospital. My daughter was born as we pulled into the emergency room. The entire process had taken less than two hours.



I was raced into the ER, while they took my daughter up to the NICU. I was in shock, bleeding badly, and surrounded by a whirlwind of activity. I could only get that my daughter was alive, but wasn't doing well, and they weren't sure why.



A few hours later, they had me stable and in a room when I found out more. My daughter was doing very badly - her blood was too acidic, and it was destroying her from the inside. The doctors did everything they could, including flying her to a nearby hospital and trying an experimental treatment. After only 6 short hours of life, they asked me to make the decision to stop treatment. She died only a few minutes afterwards.