How meconium almost took my daughter's life.

When I first became pregnant I did a lot of research on all the thinks that could go wrong in an effort to prevent it from happening. Overall I thought I had worked out all the fears of labor and delivery. However, my worst fears came true when our first daughter was born. After spending 3 days in labor this beautiful life was laid upon me. A life that was quickly fading. I could see right away she was struggling to breath. She was quickly rushed to the table where my husband followed. I could not see her and I had no idea what was going on. My husband came back to me to tell me she was ok. Later I found he was completely lying. Our daughter had meconium in her lungs. This is a link for those that want to know the details of what it is, but it is basically like tar once air hits it. Four hours after delivering my daughter she was sent to Oakland Children's Hospital. I later found out that this was something that was fairly common with one exception. The nurse staff are supposed to check when your water breaks for meconium. Mine did not. So not only had did my daughter get meconium in her lungs, she had been breathing it in for hours up until her delivery. When I asked if she was going to be ok the doctor looked at me with a long stare then said, " It may be a few months before she can go home." I was crushed. The sadness I felt in that moment was the worse feeling I have ever felt in my life.
This story does have a very happy ending though... After a week of being on a breathing machine and having wires running all over her, they took everything off and she let ok a huge scream. Several hours later we were taking her home. Now at 15 months she has some seriously strong lungs and can scream so loud you won't be able to hear for at least 5 minutes. Moral of the story... If when your water breaks it is a a dark brown color. TELL YOUR DOCTOR ASAP... Had the doctor know that there was meconium in the water he would have had a special machine that would suck it out before she was able to breath in air...