D Day

This is it. The day my twins were born. Four years ago today, at 5:45 and 5:46 to be exact, our long journey through infertility had finally ended, and the crazy journey of parenthood had begun. I know how differently it could have all have gone. I may never have gotten pregnant, we might not have had the luck to have insurance to try IVF in the first place. One out of four pregnancies end in the first trimester, roughly one third of twin pregnancies reduce to a singleton pregnancy. I could have developed any number of pregnancy complications, or I could have lost one or both of them during delivery. I was certainly at high risk. I was 35, pregnant with twins, and I had intensive uterine surgery to remove a fibroid a year earlier, leaving me at a much higher risk for uterine rupture. In my mind I didn't believe that I would be bringing them home, let alone full term and full size at 38 weeks gestation.

I have never had the opportunity to tell their birth story in full. Among our family and friends it has become more about my husband and his crazy running around that night than about the twins arrival. Granted, his part of the story is upbeat and funny, the kind of thing that would fit right into a modern romantic comedy. My story is different, it is passive and filled with sudden fear and turmoil...a lot of things being done to me and around me without having the full picture of what was going on.

I went in to my OB at 1:30 in the afternoon for a routine appointment. It was a Tuesday, and it was unseasonably warm and rainy. After my appointment, I had a routine non stress test for the twins in the maternity ward of the hospital at 4:30. I remember waddling from my OB to the ward thinking about going home and what I would have for dinner. It was starting to get dark. I had no idea that it would be four days before I stepped outside again, and that it would be the last hour I was pregnant. My scheduled C section wasn't for another week, and my due date was the week after that.

I got to the ward, joked with the ladies at the desk, and then went through the usual routine. The room set aside for NST's was little more than a closet. It had three beds crammed in it, a TV, and an attached bath. It also had a bunch of old IV stands and stuff gathering dust, and a tiny ultrasound machine and fetal monitor. I used the bathroom and put on the stretchy belly band and got "comfortable" on one of the beds. Then the fun began. The nurses put on a blood pressure cuff and monitor for contractions, and then started to track the twins heartbeats. First they found one, then the other, but they couldn't catch both of them at the same time. Then their heartbeats weren't accelerating, so they had me drink ice water and banged metal bed pans. All of this was a normal NST for me. Then alarms began to go off. The nurses ran in and made me turn onto my left side. They said my blood pressure had spiked. Then they started staring at one of the monitors. "Did you feel that?" they asked. "What???". "How about THAT?!" they asked. Nope and nope. Apparently I was having whopping contractions but couldn't feel them. Then the nurses turned me back onto my back, and lost twin B's heartbeat. Then the blood pressure monitor began to wail again. There was a lot of rushing of nurses back and forth. Everyone had on their serious faces. The very young nurse told me not to worry, that she was sure the baby was fine, they just couldn't find him. I laughed. "You can't find him" I said "But I can". They were both very active and kicking like crazy.

Then the doctor came in. You can wait, he said, until your pre op appointment on Thursday....OR...we can take them now. Huh? All the hustle and bustle was beginning to make sense to me then. I could tell they didn't want me to go home. I had a feeling I would be right back there in a few hours anyway, and maybe not in very good shape. I said "Sure...take them now." I expected to be able to go home, grab my bag, and come back...it wasn't an emergency. But oh no. The nurses went into overdrive and I began to quietly panic. I needed to contact my husband. They handed me the hospital phone, but it wasn't plugged in. Finally after ten minutes or so, one of the nurses plugged it in for me. Then if was off to the races. I don't remember much of what happened next. I don't recall if I walked to the OR, or if I was on a gurney. I only vaguely remember taking off my clothes to put on a johnny, leaving my clothes and purse in a messy pile. I remember sitting on the bed to get the epidural, and that it was VERY hot in the OR...stifling even, and that the doctors and nurses were all complaining about it and fiddling with the thermostat. I remember asking over and over about my husband, and them telling me that he had gone to get the camera and he would be there any minute. The camera?? WTF?

Then my husband showed up and they started cutting. He tells me that there was already a lot of blood on the floor, they must have already started. Within minutes I heard DA's cries, and then NB"S. I felt sick and I couldn't breath...I remember that. But everything is pretty much a blur until I woke up in my hospital room.

My husband's part of the story involves him leaving work and speeding to the hospital, he put on a set of scrubs, then he went to the OR. The doctor asked him about the camera, and he told them he didn't have it. Then he said that we live right across the street. He put his street clothes on over his scrubs, ran to get the camera, came back, and put yet another set of scrubs on over his clothes...and scrubs...and almost dropped from heat exhaustion because it was 90 in the OR.

Scary. Funny. Ordinary everyday miracle. My boys. Five years of trying, four rounds of IVF, one major abdominal surgery and one miscarriage later. Thirty eight weeks gestation...6 lbs 9 oz and 7lbs 1 oz of healthy, bouncy baby boy. And totally worth every penny, every heartache, every shot, all the fear and hope....my everything.