My name is Kimberly and I'm 34 years old. I've been married for 6 1/2 years to Jay (38) and have a fairly sad story.

I have been pregnant 6 times and lost 7 in the last 3 1/2 years. The first 5 times I miscarried between 8 & 12 weeks with each one. Then in January of 1999 I found out I was pregnant for the 6th time. I miscarried a twin at 8 weeks with this pregnancy. I came down with a severe case of toximia at 30 weeks. Unfortunately I didn't have any warning signs of the disease and didn't know anything about it. I suddenly began seeing flashing lights, my blood pressure shot sky high and my head was killing me.

Within 24 hours of finding out about my condition our son, Robert Saul was born July 14th 1999. When my son was born he was on all sorts of tubes, etc. with questionable chance for life. 6 days after he was born they thought he was out of the woods...he was off of all the tubes, taking breast milk, etc. The following day they found out he had necrotizing colitis (a whole in his stomach causing infection) and he passed away at 11:00 on July 21st, exactly one week to the hour from when he was born.

We have now been trying to conceive for the past 6 months. While I desperately feel that a child is in our future I still have my concerns about this disease. I never realized how close I was to a comma until I started reading some of the posts on this group.

June '00