How a mum kept her baby alive after her waters broke at 22 weeks
'I couldn't just sit around doing nothing to save him.'
By Practical Parenting
March 13 2017
A mum from England has shared her story of how she managed to keep her baby alive after her waters broke at 22 weeks.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Louise Adams said she couldn’t sit back and do nothing.
"All they could do is monitor me in hospital waiting for the inevitable miscarriage, which they said would happen in days," Adams said. "But I could feel Joseph kicking. I couldn't just sit around doing nothing to save him."
Coming across other success stories from women who had experienced the same thing, Adams set out to drink litres of water.
"The more the mother drinks the more the baby drinks and urinates," Adams said.
"As excretion of urine by the unborn baby is the major source of amniotic fluid production in the second half of pregnancy, it made sense that increasing my fluid intake could make a difference."
For 13 weeks, Adams drank more than 11 litres of water a day until her baby beat the odds.
"I shut myself off from the world. It wasn't easy but I drank around seven pints a day. I also consumed cranberry juice and raw cloves of garlic after reading they could ward off infection, common when the waters break early," she said. "Doctors and midwives were skeptical and gave me no hope. They told me there was little research and it was unlikely to make any difference. But I had nothing to lose."
Adams made it to eight months before giving birth to Joseph via C-section.
"When we heard him crying his eyes out, we were overjoyed. He was absolutely perfect and did so well, he came home after just a week."
