We had been trying for about ten months before finally getting pregnant with Taylor. I can still remember taking the home pregnancy test. I was at work and had gone to a drug store and bought the test, then went back to work. I went into the bathroom and took the test. After waiting a few minutes, I looked at the test and couldn’t believe it when there was two lines. My husband, Armando, and I worked at the same company, so I went and showed him the test. He didn’t believe it and asked to see the instructions to make sure I knew what I was talking about. After reading the instructions, he still didn’t believe it, and said he wouldn’t believe I was really pregnant until I went to the doctor’s office and had a test done there. So I called the doctor’s office and set up an appointment. Sure enough, I was pregnant. After waiting so long, we could hardly believe it. I got pregnant with my first daughter without hardly trying at all on our honeymoon.

The pregnancy was going well, no morning sickness or any other discomforts, but I was as big as a house by the time I was 6 months pregnant. I kept telling Armando that this pregnant wasn’t going to go to full term. My stomach couldn’t get much bigger. I could feel my skin stretching, it was pretty painful.

On Wednesday, January 17, I woke up looking like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. I was so swollen I could only wear my tennis shoes, tied very loosely. I called my ob/gyn’s office to ask if I could come and have my blood pressure checked just to make sure everything was okay. They told me to come in the next morning for a non-stress test.

The non-stress turned out okay. They then had me give a urine sample. When they tested it they discovered that my urine had protein in it, which is a sign of pre-eclampsia, but my blood pressure was fine. Then the nurse weighed me and I had gained 16 ½ pounds since my regular appointment the week before. My ob/gyn, Dr. Breen, wasn’t in the office that day, so the nurse had me see one of the other ob/gyn’s. She couldn’t believe I had gained so much weight in just a week. She even weighed me on another scale just to make sure that the first scale wasn’t broken. She said since my blood pressure was fine there was probably nothing to be worried about. The nurse gave me a note to take the rest of that day and the next day(Friday) off of work.

Later that day, the nurse called me back and said that she had spoken to Dr. Breen and he said that I should be on strict bedrest until Monday when I should come back and be checked out again. I didn’t really stay in the bed as much as I should have, I didn’t really think anything was wrong.

That next Monday morning(Jan 22), I went back to Dr. Breen’s office and had another non-stress test, which turned out fine. When they weighed me, we discovered that I had gained another five pounds since Thursday the 18. I also had more protein in my urine, but my blood pressure was still fine. He measured my stomach and said I was measuring bigger than I should have been. Like I said earlier, I was as big as a house! He had me have an ultrasound done because he thought I might have had excess amniotic fluid. While doing the ultrasound, they discovered that I did have excess amniotic fluid and the baby was also retaining fluid in her abdomen and in her scalp. They could also tell that the baby had some heart problems.

Dr. Breen sent me to another hospital that had a better equipped NICU, he said I may be having the baby soon because of the problems I was having. I was almost 31 weeks pregnant, the baby’s lungs wouldn’t be developed enough to survive without a lot of help. He also wanted me to see a perinatologist, which is a doctor who specializes in problems with babies while still in-utero.

The perinatologist did a level 2 ultrasound. Taylor’s heart was enlarged, taking up almost all the room in her chest, but the left side was very small. Her heart wasn’t pumping the blood properly, the good blood was mixing with the bad blood. He said that the baby probably wouldn’t survive, and if she did, would need an operation to correct her problems.

A neonatologist came to see us later and said that our baby would probably die very soon after being born. They wanted to wait off on the delivery as long as possible to give her lungs time to mature further, so that she would have every chance to survive.

The perinatologist wanted to do an amniocentesis or another test where they draw blood from the umbilical cord to see if Taylor had any other problems such as Down’s syndrome or dwarfism. He said if she did, they wouldn’t be as aggressive in their actions of trying to save her. My husband and I refused the tests because we didn’t care if our baby had any other problems, we wanted them to try and save her no matter what.

That night, my kidney’s almost quit working completely because of the pre-eclampsia so they had to deliver Taylor, they couldn’t wait any longer. At Tuesday, January 23, 1996, at 12:54 AM, Taylor Alyssa Ordonez was born via c-section. She didn’t die immediately after birth like everyone thought she would. After they had her all hooked up to everything, Armando got to go see her. One of the nurses took a picture of her and brought it to me. It was so hard not being able to go to my baby.

Later that day, one of the nurses came and helped me into a wheel chair and took me to see Taylor. It was terrible seeing her hooked up to so many machines with so many tubes coming out of her. She was still retaining a lot of fluid and was very swollen. Since her heart wasn’t functioning properly, the blood was standing in her veins instead of being pumped through, and the fluid in her blood was leaking through the walls of the veins causing the retention in her abdomen and scalp.

I left the hospital on Thursday, January 25. Leaving the hospital without