The Birth Story

Okay so I thought I should detail our experiences the past few days so here we go...

It all started (and ended) on Saturday. Saturday morning I realized that my body was strting to take action. No contractions really, but a little progress was made. By Saturday afternoon I thought maybe I should call the doctor to see if he wanted me not to take my blood thinners because I suspected that I would go into labor in the next couple of days. When I spoke with the doctor I was surprised that he told me to go into L&D. I really thought that since I wasn't contracting at all that I would get to stay home for awhile.

It was about 2 PM in the afternoon and Emily was still napping so I told Josh just to stay home until she gets up. I knew from an earlier experience at L&D that it would take them at least a couple of hours to monitor me. Conveniently enough we had already asked friends to watch Emily that evening because we were scheduled to take our hospital tour that night. I thought maybe we could get our monitoring done with and then still catch the tour.

I show up at L&D around 2:30PM but am told that I need to wait in the waiting room because all of their rooms were full. The crazy thing was that even the waiting room was full. I had to ask someone if I could have their seat while I waited. I sat in the waiting room until about 4PM when I had a contraction and my water broke. Fortunately it started small so no one in the waiting room really noticed. I rang the bell for the desk and asked if I could come back. I guess my timing was perfect because they had just finished cleaning a room for me. They got me situated and I quickly found out that I was already dilated 4-5 cm and was contracting regularly.

My doctor showed up and unhappily consented to let me have a vaginal delivery. I had been begging him for awhile but he resisted. That night he found some other dotor in the hospital who said he would assist with my delivery if I paid him $500. I thought the money would be worth it to avoid a C-section. They call the anesthesiologist and are prepping me for epidural when the doctor comes in and tells me that I can't have an epidural because I haven't been off my blood thinning medication long enough.

So...here are my new options. Attempt an all natural twin delivery or be completely knocked out with general anesthesia for a c-section. Needless to say I was very disappointed with these options. I didn't really feel like I was up to a natural delivery, especially with twins and all of the possible complications that come along with that, but I also really hated the idea of a c-section. Especially one that I wouldn't be concious for.

In the end we went with the C-section. We just felt like the odds were stacked against us for a successful delivery of twins. I was already pushing my luck in hoping that the second one wouldn't turn or go into distress, plus paying the other doctor, plus now no meds?! The actual surgury went quikly but recovery has been pretty hard. Today is really the first day I feel okay. We're very grateful to have my parents here helping with Emily which has allowed Josh to stay with me in the hospital all this time and grateful to everyone else for their love and support over the past few days (and months)in helping us through this pregnancy by being kind friends and many of you great babysitters. It really does take a village.