February 1, 2006 – I was in heavy labor with my twins (my 5th & 6th sons) – but they were 6 weeks early. Labor had started around 3:00am and I was finally being rushed down to the labor and delivery floor of the birth center. When I had left the 4th floor I had been dilated to 4, by the time they got me downstairs I was dilated to 6. The nurse I was given I recognized from triage – she had overseen one of my NST’s up in the triage unit a couple of weeks previously – truth be told she was the one and only nurse that I hadn’t cared for out of all of them that had cared for me during my NST’s.
Funny thing though is that the very things that I hadn’t cared for about this nurse in the Triage unit, were what made her wonderful when things needed to get moving for me to deliver my babies. Because I had gone from 4cm – 6cm in such a short period of time she knew that things had to get moving. The anesthesiologist was immediately called in and I was in HEAVY labor!
As I’m getting the Epidural I hear the nurse running up and down the hall commanding that an O.R. be ready immediately. There had been a couple of c-sections and 2 other sets of twins already delivered that morning and the operating rooms were super busy. The nurse couldn’t seem to convince whoever needed to be convinced that I needed to be moved into one of them right away.
Sure enough as soon as the epidural was in place and working she checked me again and I was ready to go. People were LITERALLY running around at that point. A gown setup was thrown at my husband (who had to figure out what it all was for and get it on in lightning speed) and the nurses were throwing on gowns and putting a cap on my head. Suddenly everything was moving – seriously – I was being wheeled down the hall in my bed and the nurse kept telling me not to push. I told her that I wouldn’t push, but that I couldn’t put him back either.
Next thing I knew we were in the O.R. I was moved from my comfy bed to a board that was no wider than my body and made me feel like I was laying upside down. I kept thinking to myself – “how in the world am I going to deliver babies going uphill?”. As all of these people surrounded me I was looking at a super sterile room tile everywhere and stainless shelves and tons of people milling around.
There was the OB/Gyn (Dr L.), tons of nurses, the anesthesiologist, a nurse running the ultrasound to be sure that the babies stayed head down. The NICU teams were ready to go and finally my husband was there kind of behind me holding my hand. I couldn’t see him without craning my head around, which was a little disconcerting.
Finally they were ready to go. Because of the epidural they needed to tell me when I was having a contration and within a minute or two M. R. (Bugs) was born – at 6:27 am. He immediately started to cry – I have never heard such a wonderful sound! Because they were so early we had no idea how developed their lungs would be! The NICU team started to take care of him and prepared him for a trip down to the NICU where he would be watched and any needs would be handled. They were good enough to show him to me before they took him and he was a teeny tiny little thing with a round face and curly dark hair. I cried!
I didn’t have much time to reflect on it though since they were still monitoring our next baby to make sure he didn’t flip around. I had to continue to push and they put me on pitocin to make sure that my uterus didn’t get complacent in between babies. E (Monkey) was taking his good sweet time being born – after all it wasn’t his water that broke! He hadn’t chose to be born that day and by gum he was going to come when he was good and ready.
Meanwhile, my OB/Gyn, Dr. Smith had arrived and informed the other doc that she was going to deliver baby “B” (Monkey E). He stayed head down, but he wasn’t moving into place very quickly and they couldn’t break his water because there was a pocket of fluid between his head and the membrane that could potentially cause the cord to prolapse – or slip out first – before his head. This would be a problem and they wanted to avoid it, so I continued to push until finally 52 minutes later E. W. (Monkey) was born (7:19am). He too immediately cried and was cared for by the NICU staff. Again, they showed him to me as they prepared to take him downstairs – another tiny little guy only with a longer face. As soon as he was ready to go, Hubby made sure that I was ok and checked if I wanted him to go with the babies – DEFINITELY! So he walked down with E to see M and oversee what was happening with them.
Meanwhile the Doctors finished up all of the post birth stuff and my doctor reviewed all of my blood work – come to find out I was anemic now. At about 7:30 am I was finally put back into a comfortable birthing bed and moved to a LDR room to rest. Things had gone so fast that we hadn’t had time to tell people that I was in labor or even at the hospital. My sister T. had gotten wind of it and when she couldn’t track me down by phone at the hospital she took action.
Within 10 minutes of being returned to my room I had been trying to call her and suddenly she walked into the room. She had absolutely NO idea what had happened. She didn’t know that I had already had the babies and that they were downstairs and was in a complete state of panic. I had to take a moment to calm her down – she was pregnant too, due March 19th and since she’d been having some signs of early labor I didn’t want her to end up in the room next to me! I finally told her everything that had happened and she couldn’t understand why I wasn’t calling downstairs every minute.
Hubby was down with the babies and I was confident that he would make sure that everything was ok! I was also absolutely exhausted – I hadn’t slept a wink all night I had just delivered twins and I needed sleep.
The babies were fine – breathing on their own, but since they were preemies they needed to wake up and learn to eat. This could take a couple of weeks. Two days later I was released from the hospital and began the ordeal of spending each day in the NICU with my babies for the next 2 weeks.