The little twins have arrived!
Tuesday January 18, 2011- 36w,2d
Around 4pm, I start having
contractions every 5 minutes. Mild, but noticeable. The contractions stay
really consistent and gradually get more painful. I have
already been to labor and delivery 2 days before for a fierce headache and really, really don't want to go
back unless this is it. I have a friend on standby to watch Moo and Ella Bella if needed and call my mom around
8:30pm to give her a heads up she may want to drive over now and not in the
middle of the night. About 3 am and they are both consistent and painful, as painful as they were
when I got epidurals with the other 2 kids. We head to L&D and get
monitored. Definitely strong contractions but after 3 hours
no change. Still 1-2cm and 50%, exactly what I was 3 weeks before when I was
put on bed rest! So they offered
me morphine, which I declined, and sent me home. I felt so dumb, surely I would
know if it was real labor! I came home and had a bit of a breakdown wondering
how I could go as many as 12 more days in this weird labor state before my OB
would induce me. The contractions continue about every 5 minutes for the next 2
days until I go into my scheduled ob appointment. I get very little sleep and
am just d-o-n-e.
Thursday January 20, 2011 - 36w,4d
My mom and I drop the kids off at a
friends so she can go with me to my regular OB appointment. Hubs is on shift.
My mom had never seen an ultrasound so I thought it would be cool for her to
tag along. My appointment is for 10:45 but the office is really behind and we
end up waiting for over an hour in an exam room. The contractions are still
coming every 5 minutes just as they have been for days but this is the first
time my mom notices how uncomfortable I am. My ob finally comes in around noon
and does an ultrasound. Both babies are vertex again (yay!) and are estimated
to be 7lbs, 4oz for little miss and 6lbs, 15oz for the little mister. I am
scheduled for induction on January 31 but confess to my ob that emotionally I
just can not hang out in this painful labor non labor state for 11 more days.
He suggests we move induction up to the 24th. He offers to do an exam just to
check how things are going but I am in NO mood to be dejected with a 1-2cm
again. My mom pulls the "as your mom I would feel better if..." card
so I very reluctantly agree. Now it is about 12:30pm. Let's get this over with.
ob: "Is your husband on shift
today?"
me: "yeah, ya know either
protecting the city from fire or playing video games."
ob: "hmmm. Well you are 6-7,
well 7. "
me: "I so don't believe you."
ob: "Call your husband, I'll
meet you in l&d in 10 minutes, they will have a room ready for
you."
Well alrighty then. Try calling hubs. He picks up
but it's just static. I figure he is on scene, but will get back to me in a
minute. I leave a message and call the friend that is watching the kids. I try
calling hubs 2 more times on the way to the hospital. We pull into the hospital
parking lot and see a huge cloud of black smoke off to the west. I now know
exactly where hubs is. In a burning building. FANTASTIC. Being the practical
guy he is, hubs programmed fire dispatch into my phone so I could reach him on
scene if needed.
I call dispatch and get the nicest
dispatcher.
me: "I have a kinda unusual
request. I am in labor and I need to get a
hold of my husband. And it's
twins! "
dispatch: "OOOOHHHH! Well let's
get him! He is on the fire of his life right now but we will get him! Do we
need him 5 minutes fast or a couple hours fast?"
me: "Maybe about 2 hours?"
dispatch: "We will get him!
Don't worry!"
I think that was about 12:45pm.
Things started moving really fast.
We go up to l&d and my
nurses are waiting at the check-in desk for me and the room is completely
ready. I tell them my husband will be coming in full firefighter get-up and
they immediately pulled scrubs and shower stuff for
him. They start giving me 3 copies of every paper to sign while they put in an
iv and hook me up to all the monitors. Easily a half dozen people constantly in
and out of the room. At this point, I am just worried about hubs being in a burning
building and in shock that things are moving so fast.
Hubs walks into the room at 1pm in
bunker gear, boots, and suspenders. Oh the nurses made a big fuss over him.
From his perspective, this is what happened. They got called out to a massive
apartment fire around noon (?) and the whole structure was consumed. They had
gotten every one out and were protecting exposures and trying to control the fire. Hubs
thought his phone may have rung but he hadn't heard in the chaos of a big fire
scene. There were probably 30 plus firefighters on scene at this point. Hubs was cutting apart a fence with a
chainsaw when he got a call to go to command. He was perplexed because he
wasn't that close to command and there were at least a dozen other firefighters
of his same level closer. He got close to command and another firefighter did a
cradling baby motion to tell him I was in labor. As luck would have it, an off
duty fire captain was there in his personal vehicle and brought hubs to the
hospital. I guess the request for Hubs had gone out over the city wide radio so
he got lots of well wishes before even leaving the scene.
So Hubs got scurried off to the
doctor’s lounge for a shower and scrubs. Soon he was back in the room and they
were placing my epidural thinking my ob would be coming in to break the
amniotic sac of baby a anytime. Well the epidural got placed and then
everything came to a screeching halt. Not that I cared one bit now
that I had drugs. My ob had delivered a baby next door and then gone back for
office hours, and he would get to us later in the afternoon. So we had a nice
calm break for an hour or 2 when we did nothing. It was glorious. My water
never broke on it's own and my contractions had spaced way out, like
15-20minutes apart. Just before 4pm, I told them to call my ob.... now! I
remember looking at the clock at 3:58pm and then my ob came into the room and
broke baby a's water. At this point there were a
dozen people in the room, including someone video recording for the hospital. I
had the weirdest epidural, both my legs were completely numb but not umm, the other parts. I couldn't feel
pain intensely but certainly knew exactly what was going on. They started me on pitocin at this point because with multiples
there is a much greater risk of bleeding out. 2 or 3 contractions and 6 or 7
pushes and baby a, Miss Awe, was out! Pink and screaming. 4:03pm 6lbs, 5oz 19
inches.
Time for baby B, Mister Shock. With
twins, baby b usually doesn't do as well because they have to go through the
stress of labor twice. So the plan was to let baby b, who was also head down,
come in his own time. Well screw that plan. Almost immediately after A was born, baby B stuck his
hand out and waved to everyone. His hand and his umbilical cord. NOT GOOD. So my ever calm OB
shoved his arm and cord back up and then everything got very intense. My ob
proceeded to "go fishing" and rotate the little guy internally while
several nurses helped push from the outside. It just so happened my OB found
feet first so Mister Shock came out feet first. No one was really explaining
what was going on so I was quite surprised to see little feet when I expected a
head! It was very surreal. I wasn't worried, but knew he had to come out NOW.
It was so weird to be pushing out another kid while baby a lay screaming next
to me. And to be doing the hardest part
of pushing last. A few really intense back to back pushes and baby b was out.
They laid him on my stomach and he was very pale
and completely covered in vernix.
My mom thought he was dead, but he was moving very slightly. Not very much and
not crying but he was alive. He was put on oxygen immediately and slowly started to pink up. 4:08pm
6lbs, 6oz and 19.5inches. Welcome Mr.
Shock!
