I am Dana from California in the United States. I am one of the lucky people who have dealt with Vasa Previa. Cheyenne survived this potentially fatal condition. Here is our story:

My husband, Justin, and I have been together since we were about 16 years old. We met in high school in September 1986, but I had a boyfriend when we met. We dated a little bit, but I ended up getting pregnant by another man, so Justin and I parted ways, but remained friends. We remained close throughout my pregnancy with Michael and finally decided to start dating again when Michael was about five months old. We've been together ever since.

We had a child of our own when I was seventeen. We still didn't get married because I didn't want him to marry me because of a baby. We did stay together tho and dated steadily all throughout high school and all the way through college.

In June of 1994, Justin finally proposed to me. It was beautiful and romantic. He proposed on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla, California, USA.

We went thru all of the preparations and finally got married on June 29, 1996...our four-year anniversary was just a couple of days ago. Until we actually got married, I didn't even consider having anymore kids. I think I was afraid or something. Once we got married tho, my whole attitude changed. I was looking around seeing all of the pregnant women and new babies and it started driving me nuts. I begged Justin and we talked about it. He was still very negative about it.

In January of 1997, I had a miscarriage. We didn't even know I was pregnant. I just started bleeding. I was devastated.

Finally, in April of 1997, we started talking about having a baby again. It had only been a few months since the miscarriage, but I soooo wanted a baby...a girl, if possible.

At the end of my cycle in April, I stopped taking my birth control. Then one day in early May, Justin came home from work and said, "I want a baby." I was shocked and thrilled at the same time. About two weeks later, the morning sickness kicked in. Somehow I knew I was pregnant.

The last week of May of 1997, I developed a rash on my back. It was quite painful and it had little blisters. I went to the doctor and they said it was SHINGLES. Yeah. They wanted to give me some medication to make the shingles not last quite so long, but I was three days late at the time.

I'm never late. They said they would do a pregnancy test and for me to wait a day until we got the test results back. I said fine. The next day, the doctor's office, or the lab, I can't remember, called with the results. I was pregnant!!! Just 4 1/2 weeks. Boy, was that going to be a LONG pregnancy.

We held off telling anyone for a while. I wanted to wait until I hit the 10-week mark since I had had my miscarriage at 5 1/2 weeks. Yeah, that lasted. We ended up telling our parents on the 3rd of June. I was about 5 weeks pregnant...due date February 2, 1998.

I was sick during the entire pregnancy. The first four months, it was morning sickness...all the time. I would wake up in the morning and roll out of bed and be nauseated all morning long. I didn't throw up too much, but I wish I had. I probably would have felt better. Once the morning sickness started to go away, I started having tachycardia (racing heartbeat). It would go up to as high as 130 beats per minute for no reason we could think of. I told the doctor about it, but they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. All of the ultrasounds and stuff showed our baby to be perfectly healthy. Our ultrasound at 19 weeks told us we were going to have a girl. Cool. I was still horribly sick tho, but they couldn't find anything wrong with me.

At about 29 weeks, my husband and I had sex and I started bleeding. It didn't last very long, but it really scared us. The baby was still moving and all, so we didn't panic so much, but it still scared us.

Despite all of the medical problems, I continued to work at my job as a nursing assistant until I was 7 1/2 months pregnant. Justin and I went for the childbirth preparation classes too. I felt awful, but I figured that I just felt awful. I had NO IDEA what was to come.

We drove down to my in-laws for Thanksgiving in November. I drove the whole way down and made myself sick...ended up sleeping all day on Thanksgiving. We made it thru Christmas ok too. My son's birthday was in the middle of January, and by then I was huge. I did a small party at home and tried to keep it calm. The baby was almost there. The last couple of weeks started to get strange. On one of my visits, about 2 weeks before Cheyenne was born, I was starting to dialate and there was protein in my urine. The next week, my blood pressure was very high for me, I was retaining water, there was protein in my urine again, I had gained four pounds in one week (a no no at the end of a pregnancy), and they didn't check my cervix. I was so upset that I called and complained.

Several days later, I felt the first real labor pains. It was cool tho, because it was only a couple of days before my due date. I got all excited cause we were finally going to see our baby. Justin had been saying it for a couple months already...that he wanted to see his baby.

We woke the kids up and took them over to a neighbor's house. Then we drove the hour to the hospital. We were there for several hours, but they told us that I wasn't in labor enough and for me to go and walk around or go home or something. That was upsetting. So we went home. Later on, we decided that my labor pains were getting worse, so we headed back to the hospital. This time, they set me up in a room with all of the monitors and stuff. I did a lot of walking and stuff, but I didn't make a whole lot of progress. It got to be too late to go home tho, so they let me stay there that night. Around 6 a.m., I think, one of the nurses came in and said that the baby's heartbeat had dropped and they started an I.V. and put me on oxygen.

I am not sure I was on that stuff, but they finally let me get off that stuff cause the baby's heartrate stabilized. The midwife on duty checked my cervix again, but said that nothing had really changed. She also said that she felt some kind of a "ridge" on my amniotic sac and she tried to look at it, but my cervix was too soft. I think it was around 11 a.m. or something when they decided to let me go home again. One of the nurses pulled me aside and told me that we should go home and have sex because there are prostaglandins in semen...the same stuff hospitals use to soften the cervix. At this point, the baby was still at -3 station, which means she hadn't dropped into my pelvis at all.

We went home and I was very upset and very tired. I vowed that I wouldn't go back to the hospital until the doctor told me I had to. I had an appointment with my doctor on Wednesday, February 4, 1998 at 10 a.m. On Tuesday night, February 3rd, Justin and I decided to try out the nurse's advice...we had sex. Fun. We fell asleep around 11 p.m.

Around 3 a.m. on February 4th, I woke up to go to the bathroom and then went back to bed. Within about 15 minutes or so, I started feeling some really strong contractions. I told Justin that we were going to have our baby that day. He said cool and rolled over and started snoring again. I didn't think it was time to leave, so I tried to rest some too. I got up around 4 or so and timed my contractions for a while and they were about 6 minutes apart. I went back to bed for a little while and finally got up for good around 5:30 or so. I made sure I was packed and then I called and left a message on the machine at the doctor's office telling them that I wouldn't be at my appointment.

We finally left for the hospital around 7 a.m. or so. By the time they had checked me in at the hospital and everything, it was close to 9 a.m. I was 8 centimeters dialated and 90% effaced. The same midwife was on duty again and when she checked my cervix, she felt the ridge again. She tried using a speculum to visualize the ridge, but that didn't work. Then she went and got something called a "cone" and used that, along with a huge light, to look at my cervix.

All of a sudden, everything started going very quickly. The midwife called in two other doctors. Within a few minutes, they decided that they were going to do a c-section. I was still unsure of what was happening.

Everything went very quickly then. Someone put in an I.V., another person put in a catheter, another person shaved me in preparation. Then they wheeled me into the room and they gave me a spinal. Then they let Justin come in...all decked out in blue scrubs. Before I knew it, Cheyenne was born. They let me look at her for a minute, but I was getting sick from the spinal, so they knocked me out.

I woke up a couple of hours later and they told me that I had had a condition called VASA PREVIA. They even showed me my placenta. Very interesting.

Soon they let me see her and I held her for the first time. Justin stayed with us until they took me to my room and then he left to go and be with our boys. A little while after he left, a nurse came in and was looking at Cheyenne. She said she looked "dusky" and took her to the nursery to be checked. She never brought her back.

Cheyenne ended up being in the nursery...neonatal unit...for a week. She had to be under a hood and get oxygen and they tube fed her the first day. After that, they bottle fed her. I pumped my milk and they gave that to her. She had to have two different I.V. antibiotics too. After a week, we were allowed to bring her home.

Cheyenne Justine Janger, who was born on February 4, 1998 at 10:07 a.m., was 7 lbs., 20 inches. She came home on February 11, 1998.

I am happy to say that she has not had any long term problems from the Vasa Previa. She is a happy, healthy 2 year old today. She fights with her older brothers and talks back to me and Justin. She is beautiful and wonderful. We are very blessed to have her in our lives, especially knowing how close we came to losing her.