The birth story

My twins are one month old! And 36 weeks! S is doing well and doing a great job with the PO feedings -- nursing when I'm there (getting better at it every day -- I love it so much). D is still having breathing issues. For a brief moment they put him on low flow air and let me try to feed him. He did fine but then a new doctor nixed the low flow thing and, therefore, the oral feedings. Hopefully he'll start to head back up soon. D is over 5 pounds now and S is over 4.5! They look "huge." :)

Now, in honor of their one month birthday on Sunday the 27th, here's their birth story...

(This'll be long. I need to get it all down for myself. Feel free to skim or ignore...)

So, it all started around 5:30 on Friday evening, April 27th. I was lying around on the sofa, you know, like I'd been for the past three weeks. Looking back, now, maybe I was feeling more regular contractions than before. The guilty part of me that thinks that I could have somehow stopped this from happening if I'd paid more attention. But, truly, they didn't feel particularly intense and they weren't any more frequent than they had been two days before when I was on the monitor and got an "everything's status quo" from the MFM. (Although, oddly enough, I'd also asked him "what do I do if my water breaks?" Who knew.)

Anyway, at 5:30, I started feeling like something was wet.. I kept thinking it was not me peeing in my pants (although that happened a lot, too) but I really wasn't sure. I thought "well, I'll give it an hour and if it still feels weird like this then I'll call L&D." I went to the bathroom and prayed that it really was just urine. Back on the sofa, I noticed a trickle again and tried to call my DH but he wasn't answering his phone. All of the sudden, I just felt it all let loose and started screaming "no, no, no" as I ran to the bathroom. I had my phone in my hand and tried, again, multiple times to call my DH but no answer.

In classic TV sitcom style, I knew where he was -- it was Friday, the last day of classes, and he was out with our friends at the bar for happy hour. So, I quickly looked up the bar phone number, while sitting on the toilet leaking amniotic fluid, and called. When the guy answered the phone, I told him I needed to talk to my husband and that it was an emergency. He kind of laughed and said "it'll be a minute it's really busy." I calmly (yeah, probably not so calmly) said "no, I'm pregnant and my water just broke, I need my husband." I'm not sure he believed me. When does that ACTUALLY happen? I was about to tell m either to find my husband or I was coming to the bar trailing amniotic fluid to get him when he finally started wandering the bar looking for my husband. I can't imagine my DH's panic as he heard someone saying his last name over and over again in a loud noisy bar. Ironically, a few minutes before his sister had called and he had looked at the phone and ignored it and said to our friends "you can't ignore the phone when your wife's 8 months pregnant." Somehow, my calls weren't coming through, though.

Anyway, when I hung up with him, I called L&D and told them we were coming. My DH called the on-call OB who works with my MFM 90 miles away. When we got to the local hospital, my DH started checking us in while I ran upstairs. They immediately took me back and said my OB (the local one) was on the way. They got me on the monitor and then we all waited. Hmm. Where was she? Her office was just next door. They called. She, apparently, didn't believe that I was in labor. (She has been convinced all along that my MFM was being overly cautious and has told me multiple times that a short cervix and positive FFN and contractions don't mean much in a twin pregnancy. Hmm. Who was right?) She wasn't coming over until the nurses did a swab test to prove that it was amniotic fluid. They all rolled their eyes as they helped me take off my pants and the giant Poise pad that was heavy with fluid. When they put the swab in, I just started gushing more and more. It was ridiculous.

Anyway, she finally showed up and you could tell she was a little bit cowed by the whole thing. They brought in the u/s machine and I was beyond relieved to see everyone's heartbeats. Baby A's fluid was obviously mostly gone and Baby B was taking advantage of the new space by flailing about. At about 7 o'clock she did an internal exam (with just a speculum because she didn't want to trigger anything with my cervix) and I was dilated 2 cm. The hope was that we could possibly stabilize me enough to get me down to the "big city" hospital where there was a NICU and they could potentially keep me pregnant for a little longer if Baby A had enough fluid. I kept clinging to that possibility. The fear was, though, that I'd give birth in the ambulance (the helicopter wasn't really an option because that would be worse and it was stormy). If they put me on mag sulfate to slow the process, I could have had a blood pressure drop on the way which might have been worse.

Looking back at it now, there really wasn't a chance of stopping what had started. My guilty mind, once again, thinks there was. If they could have just gotten in touch with my MFM, he would have known the magic thing that would have made it all OK. Of course he wouldn't have. But, I just wanted to hear a doctor I trusted say "Nope, you've got to deliver her there."

Anyway, the monitor was showing that Baby B's heartrate was decelerating with contractions and that wasn't good. And, after another hour, the OB checked and my cervix was at 4 cm and was starting to shift forward and she could see Baby A's head. Yeah, we weren't going anywhere. My blood pressure was spiking up and it was just time. It must have been about 8 o'clock when she put me on mag sulfate and got the NICU transport team (who'd been waiting for the call) to hop in the ambulance and head toward town. The mag sulfate was enough to make me all woozy and weird and did lower my blood pressure but didn't seem to make much of a difference in the contractions -- contractions which were now accompanied by pressure in my pelvis. Which was bad because, as the nurse pointed out, 31 week old babies don't need 10 cm dilation to get out. And, I couldn't go into active labor because there was still the worry that my uterus would rupture along the scar from my myomectomy.

Meanwhile, we called family and my parents started packing to get on the road from Atlanta. It was so surreal. We had to sign paperwork. They asked me questions. I was in complete denial that it was happening. I couldn't stop shaking. Whenever they left us alone I just cried to my DH about how I didn't want this to happen. I was so incredibly scared. He was wonderful and kept trying to make me feel better about it. But, I just couldn't believe that anything was going to be OK at this point.

Apparently I'd arrived in the middle of a shift change, but no one was allowed to leave the hospital because who knew how much help we'd need. So, we had two shifts worth of nurses following us around. Luckily, no one else seemed to be in labor or it would have been even more chaotic.

The moment the NICU team arrived at the hospital, they wheeled me down to the OR. (Well, actually, they'd already wheeled me down once before because of confusing directions by the OB, but we'd gone back.) The amazingly nice anesthesiologist explained the spinal block to me and then I was lying on the table with my arms spread out and a curtain up and all I could think was "it's too early." My DH showed up and held my hand and, suddenly, there were about a dozen people in the room. Three for each baby, the OB, her surgical nurse and three anesthesiologists. In moments, they had me cut open and I could hear Baby A crying and someone saying 2140 (the time) -- apparently his head was lodged so far down in my pelvis that it was bruised. That is where he'd been for about four months. I saw nothing as they took him to the table to work on him. Then I felt more tugging and Baby B was out at 2141. He didn't cry at first, but cried by the time they got to the table. I asked my DH "did he cry, is that him?" And, he kissed me and said "yes."

My DH looked over the sheet and saw them playing with my uterus to deliver the placentas and look it over. I heard the doctor say something about "wow, that's thin." And the nurse said "when did she have that surgery done?" Later, the doctor said she didn't think my uterus could have stretched much more. So, I suppose it was just time. She also told me that my myomectomy scar had healed badly and was very puckered.

Anyway, within minutes, half the room was empty as they whisked the babies away. I never saw Baby B as he was at my feet. Our pediatrician (who is an incredibly sweet man who later offered to take care of our cat while the boys are in the hospital), was in charge of Baby A and he put him next to my face for the briefest of moments -- I saw his open eyes for just a second. My DH went with the NICU teams to the nursery where they started their work to stabilize the babies for the trip to the NICU 90 miles away.

Suddenly, it was quiet and the only people around were two anesthesiologists, the OB and her nurse. And, of course, me, shaking to death. The main anesthesiologist was incredibly nice and kept talking to me and asking how I was. I was shaking uncontrollably and he gave me demerol which was miraculous. Then, the second anesthesiologist started chatting with me. He asked what area of chemistry I taught and then we talked about quantitative titrations. He said I was the calmest person he'd ever seen getting a c-section. But, honestly, I didn't know what else to be. I couldn't think about what was happening with my children and I was being tugged back and forth at the waist and it was just weird. Then the doctor and nurse started chatting about buying chicks for their kids to raise. The nurse said when she asked her 3 year old what to call the chick he said "Fried."

All the men in the room started volunteering their first names for our boys. My DH said that the NICU medic also volunteered his. It was kind of funny.

After an hour, they dropped the curtain and the doctor showed me the babies' placentas (which had fused into one) and cords. Apparently Baby B's cord was all lumpy. It was weird looking. I don't know what it meant, but it wasn't just a smooth cord.

They wheeled me past the nursery but couldn't even hold the babies up for me to see. So, I just headed to recovery and hung out with the nurse as she monitored my vital signs and started me on the morphine pump. I don't remember a lot of what was going on after that except that people poked me occasionally to see where I could feel and doctors popped in and out to see how things were going. When my DH came into the room, he said he'd been with the babies for four hours with the NICU team. I have no idea how that happened. He showed me pictures of the babies and told me how big they were. When I asked which was which, he said "you would say that..." because he couldn't remember! (We figured it out about a week later after some major detective work.)

They came in and told us the babies were doing well and brought them in for a brief moment in their portable NICU units. Basically, gurneys that had everything you'd need to stabilize a preemie. Scary looking. I got to briefly touch Baby A and then Baby B as they lay there limply looking so tiny. Then they were taken away.

I felt empty and scared. It was 2 in the morning. They were gone.

To be continued...


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