Premature Birth Story

I was 26 weeks pregnant with my third child when I felt the pangs of labour suddenly and painfully come on me. I was in shock and had a large amount of fear.

After quickly scooting myself off to the doctors and hospital to be checked out I realised that premature birth is all too common. So after getting over the scare and being put on bed rest I went home to research.

The main reasons for premature birth are :

• infections of the vagina and urinary tract

• expecting twins or more

• smoking

• using recreational drugs, such as cannabis, ecstasy or cocaine

• living in poverty

• being the victim of domestic violence

• some abnormalities of the uterus

• previous surgery to the cervix

• previous terminations of pregnancy (abortion)

• previous miscarriages, especially between 16 and 24 weeks

• previous premature birth

• changing partner between your first two babies

Now that list was full on but the thing was I didn't fit in to any of those categories.

I managed to take my pregnancy to 35 weeks when my waters broke for no reason. No infection and also not any great event to have caused this. My baby boy was born totally healthy and very strong.

I than went on to have a fourth child a year later and her pregnancy had no issues either no prelabour but again my waters broke at 36 weeks and I went on to have a beautiful girl.

After my fourth baby I was talking with my doctor and he asked if my dad's mum had had premature births to which I said yes and he said that there had been some research to suggest that sometimes we inherit premature birth tendencies.

Well when I found out that I had got pregnant again with baby number five and it had only been 3 months since number four's birth, I was preparing myself for another early birth but I had the simplest pregnancy and gave birth at 39 weeks.

So therefore my theory is that there doesn't always have to be a reason and that none of us know if we are at risk and we are best to just go with the flow.