Posted by Louise Amanda Adams on Thursday, October 6, 2016
British mum Louise Adams was expecting a baby boy when her water broke at 22 weeks. She and her husband were told their baby only had a 5% chance of survival, and after a few days in the hospital, she was sent home to await the “inevitable” start of early labor. However, that wasn’t something Louise could bring herself to do, so instead of waiting for her baby to die, she got busy researching how she could save his life, with the goal of at least getting the pregnancy to 24 weeks so he would have some chance of surviving outside the womb. “I could feel Joseph kicking,” she told the Daily Mail. “I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing to save him.”
What Adams discovered was that other moms had handled this situation in a surprisingly simple way: by drinking water. But not just ANY amount of water, a crazy huge amount – more than three gallons a day! Adams explained why this made a difference: “The more the mother drinks the more the baby drinks and urinates. 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.”
Adams says she also ate whole garlic cloves and drank cranberry juice to ward off infection. “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.”
And Adams’ case, her nothing-to-lose attitude and determination to give her baby the best shot possible made ALL the difference. Not only did she make it past 24 weeks, she stayed pregnant until she was 8 months, and delivered Joseph healthy at 5 lbs., 10 oz.
