Step by Step Parenting

I gave birth to my twins on Monday, February 23rd, at exactly 38 weeks pregnant, after sleeping through most of labor and only pushing for 15 minutes.

I spent my entire pregnancy thinking that I wouldn’t even make it to 38 weeks pregnant, and that a C-section was inevitable. So when I not only made it to what’s considered full-term for twins, but also had such a smooth, empowering birth experience? I wanted to shout it from the rooftops!

One of the reasons I want to share this story (other than the fact that my blog is also where I document certain parts of my life) is because I wish that I had been told more stories like this when I was pregnant. All I heard about, for the most part, were worst case scenarios and twin births gone wrong. I was assured, by friends and strangers on the Internet alike, that I would need surgery, that recovery would be brutal, and that the first few weeks and months would be horrible.

In some ways, it’s important to be honest about the realities of the situation. I’m glad that I was prepared for all of those things, even if they didn’t happen. But rather than constantly wondering, “What if everything goes wrong?” I wish I had paused for a moment to consider…

“What if everything goes perfectly fine?”

To C-Section or Not To C-Section

When you’re expecting twins, you know to expect the unexpected when it comes to making any sort of birth plan. Twin pregnancies are inherently high-risk, and are more likely to result in C-sections, premature delivery, and NICU time.

All of the possibilities scared me while I was pregnant, so I opted for a C-section. In my mind, this would help avoid at least some uncertainty and guarantee that my birth happened in a safe, controlled environment.

One of my twins, Baby B (a clinical term for the twin higher up in utero), was also transverse and not head down, so only a select few OB’s at the office felt comfortable with a vaginal delivery. Most preferred a C-section in that scenario, and I trusted their judgment.

My mom had two C-sections, and I have several friends who have also had C-sections, so I spoke to all of them as I prepared for my own surgery. I bought everything I would need to recover, made sure to rearrange my home to accommodate what my limitations would be afterwards, and learned all I could about the procedure in an attempt to calm my nerves. My C-section was scheduled for February 23rd, when I would be exactly 38 weeks, so my goal was to even make it that far into my pregnancy.

Slowly, over the course of several weeks, my anxiety about having surgery grew. I’m someone that pays extra for nitrous oxide at the dentist’s office and takes Xanax for every flight. That is to say, I’m fairly prone to anxiety already. I began to have intrusive thoughts and nightmares about getting a C-section, and my fears slowly consumed me. I asked my doctors if I could take Xanax before the procedure, or even be fully sedated, but the answer to both of those questions was no, due to the risk it would pose to the babies.

I finally blurted out loud to my husband one night that I would rather push two humans out than have a C-section.

“Well, then why don’t you?” was his calm response. I shrugged it off, explaining how nearly every doctor at my OB’s office had already said they were not comfortable with a possible breech delivery, and that C-section was the way to go.

Luckily, my actual primary OB was one of the doctors who was comfortable with me attempting vaginal delivery. When I disclosed my fears surrounding a C-section at my 36-week appointment, she said the same thing my husband had said: “Well then why don’t we try for a vaginal delivery?”

She pulled out the on-call schedule for the hospital. Since my surgery was initially scheduled with her, and she had given me the green light to try and avoid surgery, we simply rescheduled my C-section with her as an induction. But she was only on-call that one day. Making it to 38 weeks is already a huge gamble when you’re pregnant with twins, so even though I felt better about this plan, it still required lots of stars to align.

Thankfully, the doctor who was on call the whole weekend before my doctor was also okay with the non-surgical route. This bought me a little bit more time in case I went into labor in the days leading up to my scheduled induction, and also gave me the peace of mind I needed in order to not be as stressed those last few days of pregnancy. Much to everyone’s surprise and amazement, however, I made it to 38 weeks with no issues, which meant it was time to get induced!

The Induction Process

Sunday, February 22nd was The Big Day. Of course, it wasn’t the day the twins were born, and it wasn’t even the day that I would be induced, but it was the day we arrived at the hospital!

When my husband and I woke up that Sunday morning, we knew that it would be our last “normal” day before the twins’ arrival. We had spent the past nearly three years of our relationship getting used to our respective joint custody schedules of our three older kids. We would go from one week with three young kids in the house, to a week with just my husband and I, and back again, every Sunday.

We were excited to have twins together because that meant we would have kids with us all of the time; but we were scared to have twins because that also meant we would have kids all the time. No more week-long breaks to deep clean the house, get all of our appointments done, and reset before the kids’ return. We were about to have kids in our house 24/7 again, and I felt the weight of this on that last Sunday. The house was clean and quiet, the birds were singing, and we slept in all the way until 7:30am.

We spent the rest of the day ensuring that our bags were packed, that our kids had everything they needed for their sleepover at my mom’s, and that everything was tidy enough to leave for several days. It felt odd to prepare for our hospital stay in the methodical way that one would prepare for a vacation, but that’s just how it goes when you have a scheduled induction.

That evening, we picked up our three kids from their other parents and drove over to my parent’s house. We had dinner (chicken wild rice soup since it would be easy on my stomach), helped tuck the kids in bed, and got some homework done before it was time to leave. I was feeling all of the feels about leaving behind my oldest daughter to go give birth to more daughters, so the homework was a welcome distraction to keep me from sneaking into my daughter’s room to snuggle her and cry while she snoozed away. Instead, I tried to study for Advanced Torts and not trigger an existential crisis about how my life would never be the same.

We left for the hospital around 10:45pm, since we lived about an hour away. On the way there, I started having mild contractions, but I brushed them off and chalked it up to nerves. By time we arrived at the hospital, checked in, and were in the waiting room, however, the contractions were stronger, to the point that I was uncomfortable and had to breathe through them.

After waiting for what seemed like forever, but in reality was less than thirty minutes, we were finally brought back to our room around midnight. Kevin settled in on the couch and unpacked some of our stuff, I changed into the gown they gave me and survived getting the IV placed, and we were ready to go!

Our nurse, Maddie, asked what my main birth goals were, and I jokingly said that I didn’t want stitches in two places (meaning that I wanted both twins delivered vaginally or both via C-section, not one of each) and that I wanted to feel no pain whatsoever. That last part might have been a pipe dream, but she went ahead and wrote it on the whiteboard in my room anyways.

The contractions I was already having had me dilated to 3cm already, so we decided to let my body labor on its own for a bit before inducing me. With my first, I never naturally progressed past 1cm, so I was feeling pretty confident that things would work out smoothly when I found out I was at 3cm already. After an hour or so, though, there wasn’t as much progress as we thought there would have been, so I was started on the lowest dose of Pitocin around 2:00am.

Laboring

The Pitocin got right to work, and contractions picked up almost immediately. With my first child, I was smart enough (or scared enough) to get the epidural before starting the induction process. When I asked Maddie if it would be possible to wait to increase my Pitocin until after getting the epidural, though, she hesitated.

“Normally, yes. However, if I were you, I would try to wait until 7am for your epidural, when the night anesthesiologist leaves and the day time one arrives,” she explained. “The one that’s here right now is fine, but given your anxiety, I just think the one coming in around 7am would be a lot better. He can do it quicker and almost never needs to redo it or adjust anything.”

I glanced at the clock. It was only 4am. The thought of going the next three hours unmedicated was daunting, but given my deathly fear of needles, the thought of having any complications related to the epidural was much worse. So I opted to wait.

The next several hours were a struggle. My contractions were consistently two minutes apart and fairly strong, and given how large my pregnant belly was and all of the monitors I was hooked up to, I had a hard time moving around or getting comfortable. At one point, my friend texted to ask how I was doing, and I responded with a picture of me crying but giving the camera a thumbs up. I was trying my best to literally grin and bear it!

7am came and went, and still, no sign of the anesthesiologist. I tried to be patient — after all, nearly every nurse in addition to the anesthesiologist were switching shifts at this time. I watched 7:30am pass, and then 7:45am. I was deliriously tired and just wanted to sleep. When my daytime nurse, Lauryn, came in to introduce herself, the first thing I asked was how much longer until the epidural. She left to find out, and returned with the man himself!

Maddie had made him seem amazing, so I was a little disheartened when I heard him continuously talk about what a rush he was in, and how he only had a few minutes to place my epidural before he was needed in the OR. Not exactly words I wanted to hear from someone who was about to stab my spine. Luckily, it was over quickly, which apparently was the outcome both of us wanted,

Once I got the epidural, the first thing I wanted to do was to try and sleep. I had been awake for just over 24 hours, and was starting to have flashbacks to my experience laboring with my first daughter. That time, I labored for over 36 hours with no food or sleep, and I did not want to repeat that this time around. So I got comfortable — well, as comfortable as I could — and settled in for a nap around 9:30am.

I woke up only an hour later, bummed that I wasn’t able to get more shut-eye. But I knew. My body knew and I knew. The feeling itself feels like you need to go the bathroom, but I knew what that feeling likely meant, so I called the nurse into the room to check.

Sure enough, I was dilated to 9cm, and this is when the room erupted into chaos.

The Twins’ Birthday!

I blinked, and suddenly the amount of people in the room tripled. My husband was getting dressed in scrubs. Lauryn was on speaker phone with my OB. I was being handed the most disgusting grape flavored salty liquid I’ve ever tasted, and someone was rubbing something that looked like blood on the outside of my nostrils while someone else was reading me the risks of surgeries and asking me to acknowledge and accept them.

I burst into tears. “I just woke up!” I told anyone who would listen, “I’m scared! I’m not ready! I was just taking a nap!”

Everyone did their best to smile and reassure me, while working as fast as possible. I had thought I had the rest of the day before it was showtime. But before I knew it, my OB arrive with a big smile on her face, said hello to me and my husband, and we were off.

It felt like I had been dropped into the middle of a scene from Grey’s Anatomy as I was rushed down the halls to the OR. Lauryn, who stayed next to my bed the whole time, was letting me know that there was going to be a lot of people in the OR, that there was going to be bright lights, that it was going to be cold. My doctor was running through the plan out loud again, though I’m not sure if that was for me or for the people who joined our little parade, our group snowballing larger and larger the closer we got to the OR. My husband was somewhere nearby, but I was so wrapped up in all of the chaos that I didn’t know where.

The doors to the OR flung open, and sure enough, it was cold. There were even more people waiting for us once we arrived. Each twin had an incubator and a team of people ready to tend to them, the anesthesiologist was there with another nurse, and there were at least five other people whose roles I wasn’t sure of yet.

After some incredibly brief debate amongst the team, it was decided to let me labor in my hospital bed rather than the OR table, which was great news because that table did not look comfortable. Instead, they scootched my bed as close as they could to the table, and explained that in the event of an emergency, they would simply lift me up and slide me over to the table.

Everything was moving at lightning speed. It had still been less than five minutes since we had left my room, and next thing I knew, I was finally given the all clear to push. Finally.

Fifteen minutes later, after only three or fours rounds of pushing, Emersyn Janell was born at 11:28am. She came out screaming, and probably didn’t stop for five or ten minutes. I was shocked such a loud noise could come from such a small baby! I didn’t get to hold her immediately, and instead she went straight to Kevin and her little team of supporters. I was so focused, that I barely noticed.

Next, it was the moment of truth. Since Baby B was transverse, we didn’t know which was she would descend once Emersyn was out of the way. Would she fall head down, meaning I could push her out the same way I did her sister? Or feet first, which could lead to an emergency and was the whole reason we were in an OR in the first place?

“Stop pushing!” my doctor said. I listened, and glanced to Lauryn who was still at my side for reassurance. She just held my hand, smiled, and nodded, which I took to be a good sign. Still, panic began to creep in. Time slowed down. Until finally, the smallest baby I’ve ever seen was placed right on my chest.

I was startled. I quickly wrapped my arms around her and looked around for my husband, who was still tending to Emersyn. People in the OR were clapping and congratulating me, but I was still in panic mode. Why wasn’t she crying? Shouldn’t she be crying? I finally looked down at the little bundle in my arms, who, much to my surprise, lifted her headand looked right back at me with the biggest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. It was as if she was saying, “What, mom? What are you so worried about?”

Evelyn Jane was born at 11:31am, just three minutes after her sister and what felt like the longest three minutes of my life. My doctor had told me to stop pushing because Evelyn had decided to come out feet first, so my doctor literally reached up and guided her out, just like that. And the craziest part? I didn’t even tear!

We ended up staying in the hospital for four days afterwards, but that’s a story for another time. I feel immensely grateful that I had an uncomplicated pregnancy, followed by a very easy birth. We are so, so blessed to have not just one, but two new additions to our family. I’m already in love with being a twin mom, and can’t wait to see where this journey takes us!