Henry and Charlie, Here at Last

To say its been an eventful week would be the understatement of the century! I don't even know where to begin...

Last Monday I went to see my doctor for an exam. I was 4 - 5 cm dilated and 90% effaced. Most women have gone into labor at this point, but I was still hanging in there with no real contractions. My doctor told me if I had progressed any on Wednesday that she wanted me to check into the hospital, and even if I hadn't progressed, she still wanted me to check in. She was worried I wouldn't make it to the hospital in time when the babies decided to come and I was too!!!

So Wednesday comes and I am 5 - 6 cm dilated so into the hospital I go. Adam got me settled and went home to take care of Harrison. I was basically just on bedrest there. At this point, staying in the hospital was no big deal to me. I knew the whole drill, even knew some of the nurses. So I watched some TV, took an Ambien, and went to sleep. The next day was a lot of the same. I didn't feel contractions and was baffled that I hadn't gone into labor yet. I was 36 weeks and 3 days along so I knew that every day was another day that the babies could gain weight. At this point, I was expecting them to weigh 5 lbs, 12 oz and 6 lbs, 4 oz.

That evening, I was waiting on Adam and Harrison to come to the hospital to hang out. The nurse and doctor came to check on me and did an exam. 5 - 6 cm dilated, 95% effaced, no contractions. They did a test to see if I had broken my water yet or leaked amniotic fluid. The doctor told the nurse to call her with the results and left. The nurse glanced at the test and said it was negative and walked out. A few minutes pass and she pops her head back in and said excitedly "Your test just turned positive! Your water broke!" She waited for a reaction and I just sat there stunned. She said "Did you know your water broke? When did it break?" Ok NO! I didn't know it broke. I think I would have mentioned that to someone! Apparently it was just trickling out little by little. I knew Adam and Harrison were about to leave our house. I asked her what exactly this meant?! She said that I could be going to labor and delivery OR the doctor might want to wait it out and let the contractions start and it could be 12 - 18 hours. So I told Adam what happened and calmly told them to still come, but to put Kim and Gary on high alert that we might need them to come get Harrison if things started happening. So they loaded up in the car to come.

Next thing I know, 4 nurses appear at the door with 2 wheelchairs. They start throwing all my stuff into my bags and loaded it onto one chair and getting me up to go to the other one. I was confused. Where am I going? They said Labor and Delivery! I asked if they talked to my doctor and they said she hadn't returned the page yet. So now I am being rushed to labor and delivery. I call Adam. He is also very confused. I told him to go ahead and come and bring Harrison. I just had to see my little boy before all of this happened!

It was 6:30 pm when all of that happened. Still no contractions. Where are the contractions? On the wheelchair ride over, I start barking out orders. My number one goal in life at this point is to make sure I get that epidural in time. I am frantically asking "Is the anesthesioloigst coming? Is my bloodwork done? Do you have the IV fluids ready?" It sounded like they were on top of things. They let me know that I had the "good" anesthesiologist. I kept asking them who the "bad" one was because he scared me to death. They quickly got the IV in and the anesthesiologist was there by the time Adam and Harrison walk in. I quickly said hi and kicked them out because there was no way Harrison needed to see this! The epidural was no big deal. It was like a shot that was a little extra painful. Everything started to go numb. At that point, Adam called Kim and Gary to get Harrison, I got to spend just a few minutes with him and we said goodnight. I think it was around 8:30 when they left. The doctor came to break my water the rest of the way. Everything moved really fast after that. Although I was numb I started to REALLY feel the contractions. When you have an epidural and you have a big contraction, your whole body shakes and you just feel pressure. I said several times to the nurse how intense the pressure was. She asked if I need to push. I told her yes and if I push, the baby is going to come out. She paged the doctor to come immediately. She came in, checked me out, and said "10 cm, I can feel the baby's head, get the OR ready! Jennifer, don't even cough because if you do, the baby will come out. He could crawl out at this point". Oh great! As they race me to the OR I am telling them to please not hit any bumps! They threw Adam scrubs and I was on the table in no time. When you have twins, you deliver in the OR even when its a regular delivery. If there are any problems with Baby B, they might have to do a C-section so they have to be ready. They got everything in place in just a few minutes and told me I could push. When you push, its a 10 second count. I pushed. I pushed again and the head came out. I pushed a third time and we had baby Henry. They took him over to make sure he was ok. Adam went over to look at him and assured me he was perfect. I was just gazing over there trying to get a glimpse of him. Next thing I know, there is panic happening in front of me. Charlie was up really high, nowhere near coming out. There wasn't much chance of guiding him downwards. All of a sudden they lost his heartbeat. I think it turned out that he had curled up in a little ball, because thats how they pulled him out. But when you don't hear a heartbeat of a baby, you leap into action. I heard my doctor call it. C-Section!!! Adam swears he heard the term "slash 'n' go" somewhere in there. There are at least a dozen people in the room and they all start moving so fast and the curtain goes up in front of my face. They send Adam out. The oxygen mask was stuck on my face. I was so confused. I knew what was happening could be very bad. The anesthesiologist is putting more drugs in me. I was trying to stay calm and not hyperventilate. I couldn't say anything and I finally get the words out to the anesthesioloigst "Is Charlie ok?" He asked me to repeat myself. It took all my strength to say those words again because just saying them freaked me out more than anything in the whole world. "Is my baby ok?" He couldn't tell me yes and he dodged the question and gave me a polite answer. I don't even recall now what it was, but it was obvious he was saying it just to keep me calm. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, which turned out to be just 9 minutes, they pull Charlie out via emergency C-section. They tell me he is ok. They are sewing me up and throughout the madness I say to no one in particular, "Please go get my husband". I knew he was probably a mess outside. He is by my side in a second and looks at Charlie and assures me he is ok. They got an 8 and a 9 on the APGAR scale. If you have had a baby, you know thats good. Especially for preemies. Charlie has 4 lbs, 11 oz and Henry was 6 lbs, 1 oz, much smaller than I thought they would be. I thought they would be a half pound apart, they were a pound and a half apart. I briefly got to hold Henry and Charlie. Unfortunately I didn't get to hold Henry again for about 5 hours and Charlie for 10. Henry was born at 9:16 pm and Charlie was born at 9:25 pm. It was less than 3 hours from the time that we got the positive test result. Thank goodness I was in the hospital. Since I had no idea my water had broken, who knows if I would have made it to the hospital in time or what might have happened to Charlie? As I was laying there afterward, I notice blood splatter on the curtain. As I look up at my doctor, I see blood splatter on the shield she was wearing over her face. I look over at a trash can and there is bloody stuff thrown in and draped over the side. An emergency c-section is NO JOKE! I had to lay there on the OR table for a little while because you have to get an x-ray done immediately after. Normally before a surgery, they count all their tools and with an emergency one, they don't have time. They have to do an x-ray to make sure no tools were left inside you! Also, they don't have time for the full disinfecting process, etc. They literally just throw the iodine on your stomach (I think thats what it was). The whole thing reminds me of a horror movie but thank goodness they got my baby out safely. Thats all I cared about.

After the surgery, Adam went to the nursery with the babies while they did all their normal tests, baths etc. I went to recovery. It was a big dark room and I was in my little curtained area, laying there numb. There was one nurse going back and forth from a computer in my little area to a desk about 20 feet away. I started to feel pain. This was no normal pain. It came stronger and stronger. They had given me a tremendous amount of drugs, including morphine, but as the epidural wore off, I felt no morphine. I tell the nurse and they pump more morphine into me. I wait for it to set in and it doesn't. She asks how it feels and I tell her that it feels like I have been in a knife fight and someone has ripped open my stomach. They pump more drugs in. A nurse comes and pushes down on my stomach, which they have to do after a c-section. It makes me scream out in pain. Its worse than labor. She would go back to her desk and I was all alone and I kept making her come back. Finally the anesthesiologist comes in and they figure out that he had given me something that counteracted the effects of the morphine. In other words, I was feeling everything and not feeling any of the drugs. Thank God we figured that little issue out and they fixed it!!!

Now that ordeal was over. I went back to the regular room and the wait for my babies started. Henry was brought back to the room with us and it was wonderful. It was the middle of the night. We find out that because Charlie's blood sugar was low, he was put in the NICU so he could be on IV fluids to raise it. I didn't sleep for 48 hours. It was horrible. He is so wide eyed and alert. I hated having to walk away from him and leave him all alone like that with his little eyes wide open. We would drop Henry off at the nursery and go to the NICU to see Charlie. Luckily we could hold him and I could nurse him. They kept checking and rechecking his blood sugar and it wasn't until our third night in the hospital that they brought him to our room. It was midnight. We were so happy to lay the twins down together. The next day they were starting the preparations to discharge us. They have to do something called a car seat test for preemies. You bring your car seat in, they strap the babies in, and monitor them for an hour. Henry passed. Because Charlie was 4 lbs, 11 oz and our car seat was for 5 lbs and up, he failed. Adam went to buy a new car seat. He is retested and he failed because his heart rate dropped. They tested him again in 3 hours and he failed again. They said they would retest in 24 hours because they wanted to observe him in the NICU. Henry and I were scheduled to be discharged that afternoon. The nurses said that we could stay an extra night in the room as a courtesy. I was all set to do so and planned for Harrison to come stay in the room with us. All day long I was upset because I couldn't stand being away from Harrison anymore. All we wanted was for all of us to be under one roof together. Harrison came and we ate dinner and we made the decision together to just go home. The doctor had told me it could be tomorrow when Charlie came home or 3 to 5 days. I knew we weren't helping him by being in the hospital and I was ready to give the rest of the family a normal life again. So we packed up in the middle of the night and went home. I cried so much. When I was waiting for Adam and Harrison to get to the hospital earlier, I went out in the hallway to walk Henry around. I saw some of the nurses that helped deliver them. They asked about Charlie and when I explained to them that he had to go back to the NICU and we had to go home without him, I just lost it. I sobbed and sobbed and couldn't stop. Leaving Charlie was the the most painful thing I have ever done.

The next day, Adam went to spend the morning with Charlie while I stayed home with Henry. Harrison went to play at MeeMee's. That afternoon, one of my friends came to take me to the NICU so I could see him. I can't drive yet and am on painkillers so getting back and forth to the hospital was going to involve a lot of planning. I knew there was a chance that we could take him home that day but didn't allow myself to even think about it. Within 3 minutes of getting there, they let me know we could take him home. I was ecstatic! Adam raced over there so we could get to him before they closed to visitors at 6:30. As we walked out that day, I realized it was one of the happiest days of my life. But I hurt so badly for all the babies and families we were passing by as we walked out. We probably had the healthiest baby in the NICU and there were babies there that had been there for months. I can't imagine what they go through everyday. We took our babies home and Harrison got to meet Charlie for the first time.

Everything has been crazy for the past few days but I love it. I don't even mind getting up in the middle of the night. I will breastfeed one and Adam will feed the other one from a bottle with breastmilk. Its nice. The babies are sleeping and nursing well. We went to the pediatrician yesterday and she said they are both perfectly healthy. They are tiny and beautiful and I couldn't ask for a better family. This will definitely go down as my happiest birthday ever :)

(And if you are wondering how in the world I found time to write this, it took several days and the usage of a hands free pumping bra! Hey - don't knock it til you try it!!!)