I had been uncomfortable at work all day long, but the discomfort seemed to pass whenever I stood up. Finally I decided to go home early, since I wasn't getting anything done anyway.

On the expressway home, I noticed that the discomfort passed even though I couldn't stand up while driving. It dawned on me I might be having contractions, so I started to time them at 3:19 p.m. Every other time they were six minutes apart, and every other one three minutes!

I drove into the driveway honking the horn. My husband phoned Dr. Stanley, who told us the labor was too early and had to be stopped. The doctor said he'd meet us at Bi-County Hospital as soon as we could get there.

Upon arrival, my contractions were two minutes apart. As I hurried past all the newborns in their cribs I fought back my tears, wondering if my baby still looked like a fish or had formed enough to look like a human.

A resident examined me and said that the labor couldn't be stopped because my water had broken. The hospital also had no facilities for dealing with early births. He explained that the baby had a long, hard road ahead of it if it survived – and the chance of that was less than 25 percent. But I heard the baby's heart still beating on the monitor, so we weren't going to give up yet.

Dr. Stanley got there, but his visit was brief and to the point. Sh**, get an ambulance from St. John's, he said, and then he disappeared.

By the time the ambulance arrived, I was dilated to 5 centimeters. Then a new debate developed. It seems that equipment for baby delivering in ambulances is crude, and everyone was afraid that that was exactly where he'd decide to be born. To me, there was no decision to be made. There was nothing for the baby at Bi-County, and nothing for the baby in the ambulance. We had to make it to St. John's, so we just would.

Now it was rush hour. At 5:20 p.m., we were stopped in heavy traffic. The ambulance driver was a feisty red head with a lead foot. A gentle, nervous resident rode in back with me. He seemed obsessed with constantly asking if I felt like pushing. The third crewmember was a woman who knew just where to put her hand on my back whenever the pains got tough.

St. John's met us with 10 staff members for the baby and 10 more for me. The pain had taken over my ability to reason. Everyone started asking me the same questions I'd already answered. I didn't realize that my copious prenatal records had not made the trip with me. These people had no clue who I was, or who my baby was.

It didn't help that my husband did not have the benefit of ambulance sirens to smooth his way to the hospital. While all this was going on, he was battling his way through traffic, searching out a parking spot and navigating the maze of hospital corridors in search of someone who would reunite him with his family.

I needed to sign forms, but couldn't focus on understanding the words. While I kept telling them to ask my husband, no one had the nerve to tell me he wasn't there.

A doctor with hands the size of basketballs examined me. The baby was on his way. That was the good news. However, the little guy's hand was on top of his head. If allowed to proceed through the birth canal, the baby's muscles would be torn from his spine and he would be left with a shrunken arm that would not function. Dr. King suggested a Cesarean section and I agreed.

Immediately I felt myself rolling to the operating room, slowing down only long enough to provide a blood sample in case I was about to need a transfusion. Everyone seemed to be struggling not to panic.

The anesthetic numbed me below the waist, but didn't put me out. Someone told me that the bigger the baby, the better his chances of survival. A moment later, I heard his beautiful cry. Then someone turned my head so I could watch them working on him. I heard someone say it was a boy. Someone else responded that he was small, too small. They showed him to me, but quickly took him away. Then I was alone.

My 10 people began the tedious task of stitching me back together, while exhaustion crept over me.

My husband came to the recovery room all excited. I could tell he was in a good mood and talking about the baby. He asked me if I could hear him and I said yes. Trouble is, I couldn't remember what he was saying right after he got done saying it. I decided that I could do no more that night, said a little prayer and figured I'd deal with it after I saw if the baby lived through the night.

I don't remember the next two days, except that somehow my son cracked my heart open wide with love and admiration for his spirit. My baby was lost in a web of tubes and wires that led to machines and lights I didn't understand. He looked like a human Christmas tree with all that stuff hanging off of him. It wasn't the natural birth I had planned to have, but I was deeply grateful for all the trappings anyway.

The pastor came to see us Monday, which is when I learned what my husband had tried to tell me in the recovery room. The doctors had examined our son shortly after his birth and determined that he was truly in excellent shape even though he only weighed 1 pound, 12 ounces. They were able to back off his life support systems very quickly and decided he must have spent 28 weeks in the womb, rather than the 25 weeks they'd originally thought. That extra three weeks made a very significant difference in his prognosis.

Before the first night was over, a doctor told my husband that our son's survival was 48 percent assured. My milk came in. I kept it flowing until the baby was stable enough to receive it through a tube that led down his throat and into his stomach.

His weight topped 2 pounds on May 31, 15 days after his birth. I ended up pumping eight hours a day and still not getting enough milk for his needs. He was finally allowed to breast feed directly after his third month, and brought the volume back up in no time flat.

During his stay in Neonatal Intensive Care, the baby struggled with attacks of apnea (stopped breathing) and bradychardia (stopped heart). Three times, these attacks increased and he started to hold fluid.

Every time, he was taken off milk and put on intravenous feedings. Each time, many tests and X-rays could not find anything wrong. Then they'd take him off the needles, work him back up to maximum feedings, and we'd start back over again.

His weight hovered at an agonizing 2 pounds, 9 ounces for over a month. The staff started to talk to me about babies dying for no specific reason, just a failure to thrive.

In my mind, the NICU staff was expert when it came to babies and it was my job to become an expert on ONE baby. I had been watching him so closely that the third time they wanted to cut his food I said no. They also wanted to install a catheter surgically because they were running out of veins in his arms, legs and head for the intravenous needles. Again I said no.

I believed that he just couldn't handle the fluid load on his kidneys and suggested they simply cut back his rations. They agreed to try it, but only for 24 hours.

In that time, the baby actually gained weight – just a few grams, but enough to show that we were on the right track. That day I felt like I'd earned my son.

The NICU perked up. They started giving him Lasix to help get rid of the extra fluids. A salesman came in with some powder we could add to his milk to boost its nutritional content without increasing his fluid intake. That way, he was still able to get up to maximum feedings.

From that day forward, his weight just shot up. His bradychardia and apnea subsided, and it was just a matter of getting him weaned from the monitor, incubator, medications, etc. Three months and five days after his birth, he went home.