Life

 

Mother’s water breaks at 16 weeks, she refuses “termination,” miracle baby now thriving

By Dave Andrusko

Katy Evans’s waters broke when she was just 16 weeks pregnant, leaving doctors to warn her unborn baby had a one per cent chance of surviving.

Katy Evans doesn’t blame the doctors at Lister Hospital in Stevenage, England for asking her if she wanted to “terminate” her pregnancy when her water broke just 16 weeks into her pregnancy.
“Mrs. Evans had preterm prelabour rupture of membranes (PPROM), a rare condition causing the amniotic fluid to drain from her womb,” reported The Daily Mail’s Louise Baty. Mrs. Evans learned it was standard procedure for doctors in the UK to offer a “termination” in this situation to give the mother the best chance of avoiding a serious infection.
But Mrs. Evans and her husband, Rich, held onto hope, although they were told the baby had less than a 1% chance of survival and “even if it did survive, it might develop without limbs or be born unable to breathe.” They went home after Mrs. Evans spent 48 hours in the hospital and received antibiotics.
Then, as Louise Baty explained,

“Incredibly, two weeks later, scans revealed her waters had replenished themselves in her womb – something doctors treating her had never seen before.

“Five months later, Mrs. Evans and her husband Rich welcomed their ‘miracle son’ Leo, a brother to their three-year-old daughter Amber.”

During those two days in the hospital she’d read up. She found that although the chances of a successfully completed pregnancy were very, very small, “I discovered that, in reality, there seemed to be a much higher rate of survival in these cases than the one per cent figure from official statistics. That gave me hope.”

She refused to give up on her unborn child. “This was a very much wanted pregnancy,’ she told Baty. “I could feel my baby kicking. I already loved this little person.” 
Two days later she hadn’t miscarried and a consultant came to see if she would agree to a “termination.”

“I told her that no, I didn’t want an abortion. I said that I wanted nature to take its course.

“She was clearly shocked because she told me that, perhaps, I should speak to my husband, implying that he’d be less emotional.”

But husband Rich was in full agreement with his wife.
Of course when she went home, a premature delivery/miscarriage was possible at any moment. But when they went back to Lister Hospital two weeks later, a scan

“revealed the unbelievable had happened. Mrs. Evans’s waters had replenished in her womb, after the rupture healed. Doctors told the couple they had never seen a case like theirs before. The scan also revealed that the baby seemed to be developing normally.”

“It was the first time that I allowed myself to cry,” Mrs. Evans said.

They were warned that her water could break again and that she was still at a high risk of infection. But “I barely heard the doctors telling me all this because I was on cloud nine and thought everything was fantastic,” she said.

The milestones came and went—the key being 24 weeks. As Mrs. Evans diplomatically explained to the reporter, “from then on, the NHS [National Health Service] considers it a viable pregnancy – a baby rather than a foetus.”

Leo is now 8-months-old, weighs 17lb, and is expected to have completely caught up with his development by 10 months. “We feel unbelievably lucky,” Mrs. Evans said. “It’s just over a year now since I was sitting in that hospital bed, waiting for a miscarriage.”
She added thoughtfully, “It’s amazing how you will fight for this baby inside you. I wanted my child to make it.”

Source: NRLC News