My husband and I were very lucky in how fast we were able to become pregnant for it being our first. I had no morning sickness, no problems at all during my pregnancy. If it wasn't for going to the doctor every month and seeing my belly grow I would have never known I was pregnant. It was just that GREAT. Until one Monday morning, Sept 14th 09 I got up at 5:30am and drove off to work. On my way there I noticed that I was having a very light pain in my left side. It was like a cramp. But I wasn't to worried because it was so light it didn't hurt really. But once I got to work at 7am I noticed that it was happening every 5 to 10 minutes non stop. So finally around 8:30am I started to document it on a little post-it. Never told anyone just kept working. I was leaving early that day to go to the dentist to have work done. So before I left at 1pm I had asked a co-worker if he would get his wife to call me. (She was a nurse for 8 years until a couple of months ago when she became a stay at home mom with their first child) I left work and went to the dentist still these light cramps were every 5-10 minutes non stop. Since i am SOOOOOO stubborn I didn't think anything is wrong. I always hated hearing about women who were pregnant and would go to the hospital because they "thought" they were in labor and then they were sent back home. I didn't want to be one of those people who were sent home. Once I was laying in the dentist's chair Baby J started to kick like crazy. I guess he didn't like the noise from them drilling. So that made me feel better that he was kicking and I knew he was alive. So I disregarded all the small cramps I was still having. Came home and around 5ish I guess it was I went to pee and noticed a very small dot of blood. Called the Doctors office which was now the answering service. They told me that a nurse would call me, so finally around 6 a nurse called I told her what had happened all through the day and about the little dot a blood. She told me to get some Tylenol and drink a big glass of water and to lay down, if it got any worse or didn't stop in an hour go to the hospital. Well since I don't keep Tylenol I had to go to the store. But shortly after the phone call from the nurse I felt like a had to go to the bathroom and I'm not talking about peeing. Finally about an hour after trying (getting up and starting to go out the door and then turning around to go back to the bathroom). I left for wal-greens, at this time the cramps are stronger and are lasting longer. I got back home went straight to the bathroom to try again and took my pill and had a drink. Now the cramps are really hurting and lasting longer and coming faster. Called my husband just to see what he thought I should do. He had left that morning to go to Houston on a business trip. As I got his input I told him I was going to the hospital. So I drove my stick shift to the hospital and half way there i felt the urge to push. Finally was able to get to the ER and let them know what was happening, shortly after my arrival they had me on the bed telling me that my water bag was bulging and they could feel him. It was to late, they couldn't stop it, He was coming no matter what. There was no time for a c-section and he was coming out feet first. No time for drugs no time for anything but to push. He was so small 1lb 12oz 12 1/2 inches long born at 8:14pm on 9/14/09. They told me he had to go to a different hospital but everything was fine he was stable. Once I got out the next day we went to see him. A couple days went by and then Joshua's doctor wanted to talk to us in private it was 9/17/09. He told us he had a grade 4 bleed on the left side of his brain and a grade 2 bleed on the right side. My husband and I didn't understand what the doctor was telling us, when we got home we researched like crazy. One of the options from the Dr was to let him go, but hearing that made me sick. I couldn't believe he would say that to us. But once we got home and looked into it, It made me understand. My husband and I talked for hours about what we were going to do. Baby J was going to have another sonogram on 9/21 to check out his brain. So we decided not to make any kind of decision until after we heard from the brain specialist. He called us that afternoon and told us that he would have no movement on his right side and that is just the better part, we wouldn't be able to tell if he would even be able to talk, or have any type of normal life until later on. We had decided that if this sonogram was not any better that it was best to let our son go. We didn't want him to live his life in pain. Thats not the life anyone would want to live. So once we heard that from the specialist we talked to the Dr again and he said that there was more damage to the right side of his brain since the last scan. Now instead of it being a grade 4 and grade 2 it was now a grade 4 and a grade 3. All of this happened before 4pm that day. We had some family coming down to go to the hospital so they could see him for the first time. And while we were on our way down to the hospital we received another phone call from the on-call Dr saying we need to get there asap that we had a problem. It was raining so hard we couldn't see anything in front of us. Finally we got there and was told that his intestines had burst and they needed to rush him to Cooks but wanted to see what we wanted to do before they took him since they knew about they decision we were leaning on. After the long talk in the "family room" with my husband our decision was made that it was the best thing to do for him. That it is just selfish of us to keep him here to make us happy that he was alive and with us everyday when we knew he would be in pain for the rest of his life. We let the Dr know and they called the photographer in called the Chaplin in for us so he could be baptized. We were able to hold him for the first time and it was the best feeling in the world to be able to actually hold my child. But then it was the worst feeling in the world because i knew it would be the last time. My husband wanted to held him while he was still on the breathing tube. As so did I but then when they took the tube out and he would be breathing on his own I wanted to hold him until the end. So there we were holding our baby boy, our miracle baby. We were letting him go. At 12:32am 9/22 his heart had stopped and we lost our child. I know most of you would not agree with the decision we made, probably hate us for it. But I guess you have to be put in the situation before you know what you would do. So there is my story. We will always wonder the "what if's" and miss our son dearly. I think of him everyday and feel guilty if I find myself not thinking of him.