the arrival of shock and awe

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!

Miss Awe needed oxygen for a few hours and then was fine. Little Mister Shock had a very rough entrance to the world. His lungs didn't get squeezed the right way during birth leaving him struggling to breathe deeply. He has little bruises on his legs from being pulled out. He is still in the nicu on 25% oxygen and trying to figure out how to breathe and eat. It's heartbreaking to see him there especially since he looks the picture of health. I can't wait to have them both in my arms keeping me up all hours! Hopefully soon! My recovery has been a little rougher than with the other too but still very manageable. I got pretty banged up from mister shock's delivery also. I spent so much time worrying and praying over their delivery and it was over SO FAST. Ideally, I would have loved it to be kinder to my little shock, but I think he probably would have had lung and immaturity issues regardless.