The Birth of Our Twins

I thought I'd start out with the birthing story, and then follow up with a post to introduce you to each of our babies.

Our story starts out with a deadline:  August 22nd.  It was a goal to look forward to, this is when I'd be induced.  I was nervous though.  What if they couldn't fit me in that day, and I had to wait 4 more days until I'd get to have these precious boys?  I also wanted to know how my body would react to being induced and how long of a labor I'd be in.

The Morning of the 22nd arrived, my mom had come the night before to stay with the boys while we were at the hospital.  Jacob didn't sleep well, he was too anxious.  I on the other hand, slept just fine.  We received a call from the hospital a little after 6 a.m. saying there were 4 people being induced and it was a first come first serve type of deal.  We jumped out of bed, into the shower, and were out of the door in 30 or 45 minutes.  It took until about 8 to fill out paper work, get an ultrasound to make sure we could go ahead with a vaginal delivery, and finally get the pitocin in me.  The doctor arrived within the hour and broke my water and by 9:30 I had an epidural.  Then the waiting game began, Jacob and I distracted ourselves with a little Matlock.  Our doctor gave his guess that we'd have the babies around 2, our goal.  But by 12:00 I was only at a 5 and it seemed as if I'd be in labor all day.  I must add, I wasn't in any pain at this point, I hadn't pushed my epidural button to up the dosage once. A little before 1:00 our doctor comes in and says I'm at an 8!  He said he'd go down to the cafeteria and have lunch with his daughter, who has 2 sets of twins, and when he was done we'd most likely have these babies.  I was excited, and starting to feel more of the contractions, so I pushed the button.  I asked the nurse how long it would take for it to kick in, she said 15 to 20 minutes.  I told her I was feeling a lot more pressure.  She told me if I felt this certain way to give her a call, because that meant I needed to push.

Three minutes later I called her and told her, that's how I was feeling. Sure enough, I was at a 10 and ready to give birth!  She grabbed some grubs for Jacob and we prepared to get wheeled down to the O.R.  (They deliver all twins there in case of an emergency c-section.)  Mind you my epidural still hasn't kicked it up a notch, and I'm feeling pain.  They called for the anesthesiologist to give me a shot of epidural right in my back to help with the pain.  They wanted me to not be able to feel anything in case we needed to do a c-section.  Of course he was giving another woman an epidural and said he'd come as soon as he was done.  Meanwhile, we're waiting in the O.R. for this medication and my doctor.  About 1:25, I get the epidural and a couple of minutes later my doctor says I can push with the next contraction.

I pushed through one contraction and out comes William at 1:30.  The doctor reaches up and feels the head of baby #2 and breaks his water.  As soon it was emptied I was told I could push at the next contraction.  Once again I pushed through one contraction, and out came Ryan three minutes later.  Everything went so well.  No complications with me or the babies, and it wasn't that hard of labor.  We feel so very blessed with how it all went, we couldn't have asked for it to go better!

* in case you were wondering, the recovery was much worse than with the other two.  But there are logical explanations for that 1. recovery gets harder with each birth 2.  twins delivery is harder to recover from than a singleton 3. they gave me at least three different medications to help my uterus contract, since it was huge.  Which meant I was still feeling contractions for the next 24 hours or so. But as long as I stayed on top of my medicine, it wasn't too bad after the first 12 hours.  

Also, we still aren't sure if they are identical or not.  We thought they'd test the placenta, but they didn't, so we'll just have to guess.