Our Birth Story

A lot of people were curious about my birth story, so here it is! Don't worry, there isn't anything gross ... haha ...

For those of you that don't know, I had a few scares with pre-term labor earlier in my pregnancy, so at 28 weeks I was put on medication that I needed to take every 6 hours to stop any contractions. I was instructed to stop taking my terbutaline pills on Monday April 2nd at exactly 36 weeks. Pretty much right away I could feel the difference in how many Braxton Hicks contractions I was having ... unless I was laying on my side they seemed to be pretty constant ...

Finally on Wed night, April 4th, I got a little nervous and told DH that I wanted to get checked out. At my last drs appt prior, I was only 50% effaced and 1 cm dilated ... but I was worried that all the contractions were moving me along ... and my next appt wasn't till Friday and I just need a little piece of mind. My doctors have two offices, and one was open late Wed night, so we went in there to get checked out by the on-call doctor. She said I was now like 75% effaced and still at only 1 cm dilated. So at least the additional contractions hadn't caused me to suddently dilate extensively.

Now this was a doctor I had only seen one time during my pregnancy and it was very early on, I had probably seen her when I was like 14 weeks pregnant. And since the office I was seeing her in wasn't the normal office I went to, they didn't have my chart. So although when I called in I gave my name and info, I guess someone forgot to mention to the doctor that it was twins. Because she used the doppler machine to get one heartbeat and started to put it away. Then she told me I should just go home and relax. And I was like "Are you going to try to get the other heartbeat?" and she was like "oh, it's twins? well, maybe you should go over to the hospital
to the PET unit and have them check you out a little further just to be safe".

So, off to the hospital again! Luckily DH and I had put our bags in the car before leaving the house, just in case. Once at the hospital they did the usual, hooked up the heart monitors on the babies, everyone was fine, and hooked up the contraction monitoring thing as well. I was having contractions, but not really feeling any pain, just the tighening of my belly. So I assumed they were just Braxton Hicks. They gave me an IV and wanted to see if hydrating me would slow things down. In all my other pre-term scares, once they gave me fluids through an IV all uterine contractions always stopped. But this time they didn't. Finally the on-call doctor from my practice came in to see me and I was so glad cause the doctor we really wanted to deliver our babies was the one on call so i felt good that she was there, just in case this was go time!

Basically she said that they hoped that the rehydration would stop the contractions, but it wasn't. She told me since I wasn't in pain, she could send me home, but that since I stopped the terbutaline pills, the contractions wouldn't stop, and chances are I would just be back in a day or two. She was very happy that I was now at 36 weeks and 3 days (it was after midnight at this point) and she felt that we should go forward and deliver the angels ...

Well, I just didn't think it was going to happen! Me and DH looked at each other just like "holy crap! We are going to become parents tonight!" ... My doctor came back in and told us that it was a crazy delivery night, and there were like 5 c-sections in front of me (none being done by my doc though) and that it would be around 4am when we would have the c-section ...

So it was good that we had a little preperation time, cause I just relaxed, and called all my family and DH was able to run home to get some last minute stuff. Luckily I wasn't in pain, so the doc said we would just wait and do the epidural in the operating room, but if I did start to feel pain, they could easily do it sooner.

Finally they came to get me and brought me to the OR. DH had to wait outside while they prepped me and gave me the epidural. I was really really nervous about that, cause I was just scared of it, but for me it was fine. I felt the initial pinch of the numbing meds, but after that I didn't really feel anything else. Just pressure, but nothing hurt, and suddenly my legs starting getting all tingly. And then the shakes started! It was non-stop. My teeth were chattering, but I wasn't necessarily cold. I've since read that it's a side effect of the epidural. But I think it was also partially from just being scared ...

At this point they brought DH in to me, since they set the sheet up so we couldn't see anything. He sat next to me and held my hand and we just kind of looked at each other, scared, excited and mostly just totally freaked! My doctor was great and talked to us the entire time. And suddenly was like "Your baby boy is about to be born!" and suddenly I heard what sound like a duck! haha ... he made a few loud quack like sounds ... and then DH was allowed to get up and look at him and I just remember him saying "He's so beautiful, and he's got a ton of dark hair!" I was crying from the minute I heard him cry ...

Then they started working on getting baby 2. Let me tell you it felt like 20 minutes before they got her out, but obviously not, since there birth times were only 2 minutes apart. I heard the doc say "Welcome to the world, baby girl" and I cried more and DH got up to see her and said "More hair on that one!" and then they brought DH over to take pictures of them.

Then they told DH to go with the nurses to the nursery with the babies. It killed me, cause I never saw my son. I guess the nurse in charge of him just cleaned him all up and didn't think to bring him to me. She just walked out of the room with him and DH. Luckily the nurse carrying my daughter was following DH out the door, but stopped and said "hey momma, look this way, heres your baby girl". So while they were putting me all back together, I at least got to see her!

Then after they put me all back together again I was rolled off to the recovery room. DH visited me there and showed me pictures of the babies. My parents came in and said how beautiful the babies were. It was tough, cause they brought them to the NICU for observation and I was on mandatory 12 hours bed rest cause of the c-section. So I couldn't go down and see them, and they couldn't leave the NICU to come to me. The nurses told me if the babies weren't released from the NICU before 5pm, I could go down in a wheelchair and see them then.

Luckily DH and my parents were allowed in the NICU, so they went and took tons of pictures and brought them to me. Not that it's remotely the same as being with them, but at least I was able to see them.

I was brought to my room probably about an hour or hour and a half in recovery and the next few hours are a blur. But finally I was up and the epidural wore off and I sent DH and my parents back to the NICU to get more pics. At this point it was probably around 4pm in the afternoon. And they came back up like 2 minutes later and were like "the nicu released them! They are coming up to the regular nursery now". I was ecstatic, they didn't need to be on any machines after their birth. They just had some rapid breathing issues that had to do with excess fluid in the lungs ... but they resolved it themselves ... little troupers!

So around 5pm on their birthday, they rolled them into my room, and the minute I saw those beautiful babies I burst into tears. We were all crying, it was the most wonderful experience of my life ... and I can't imagine loving 2 people more than I love them!

So I was in the hospital until Monday, and we all went home together. The C-section recovery hasn't been too bad. A decent amount of pain the first few days in the hospital, but it slowed down pretty quickly.

So that's my story. What an amazing journey!