x-post from PAIF - my girls are here! (sorry long!)

xtina78 · August 2014

Birth Story - Sorry it's so long - the short version is that my twin girls were born at 758am and 759am August 16th by scheduled c/s an weighed 7lbs 9 oz and 5 lbs 3 oz.

Our c section was scheduled for Saturday August 16th at 37w4d at 730am, but we had to get the hospital at 530am. We were accompanied by my sister to act as our second "support person" in the OR. Check-in went smooth and they hooked me up to baby monitors and drew labs. My OB came in with us and then the anesthesiologist - it went really fast and before we knew it we were in the OR. They put in the spinal (no problem) and then brought DH and my sister in. I felt weirdly calm. There were a ton of people in the OR - my OB and another OB, anesthesiologist, anesthesiology asst, several nurses, two baby nurses from NICU just in case, and the surgical scrub nurse. Only a few minutes after they started the procedure - my doctor held up Twin A - "O" - we heard everyone say how huge she was - turns out she was 7 lbs 9 oz! He actually brought her to my head for me to kiss her before they took her over to be checked out by the nurses and DH went with her. Then out came twin B - "I" one minute later - and they let me know she was much smaller, actually way smaller than estimated - she was 5 lbs 3 oz! They also had me kiss her. But I could see them both being examined by the nurses and they had DH holding them very fast. I took maybe another 30 min for them to put me back together - felt a lot of tugging but no pain. I also had a heavy feeling in my chest that was alarming but they told me that was normal. Then we were off to the recovery room. The recovery room nurses were great, two helped us get the girls to latch at the breasts while the others were doing goodness knows what to my nether regions. I ended up losing a lot of blood and they was talk of a transfusion and/or back to OR for a D&C but my OB came and I think manually extracted a bunch of clots (sorry TMI) from my uterus and also gave me a bunch of meds to make my uterus contract faster and that seemed to slow things down. Also at first they wanted to send me to a high risk floor b/c of the blood loss where we would have to share a room, but after I stabilized my OB was able to get us into a room on a regular floor. It sounded like he really went the extra mile for us. The nurses have been really helpful with breast feeding. I (our little baby) is the better eater but O is coming along. I was able to get up and walk by the evening and the following day they catheter was removed and so was the IV and I was able to take a shower. It is still not easy to walk due to the c/s pain and once I let them get behind on my pain meds and that was not good!! The first night I didn't sleep at all, but we are now in a rhythm of feed (tandem), sleep, diaper change (takes about two hours plus or minus) and I have been able to get sleep while they sleep. DH or the nurses do the diaper changes. It is surreal being a parent, and really hard to be able to put into words the experience of getting to know our little girls.

Some of my advice before I forget it!

-definitely have a plan for taking a lot of pictures or even video if that is your thing and have a way to share them with family or you will be answering individual texts all day - we are using a photostream thing to share photos with close family and that has worked well. I also had an email drafted to go out with all the addresses I wanted added in so all we had to do was put in the specific details and add the pictures.

-things that have been helpful in the hospital - nursing clothes (although first day just wore hospital gowns b/c there were still so many tubes etc attached to me)

-don't get behind on your pain meds

-ask a lot of questions from the nurses - they know so much and can really teach you and Dh about swaddling, diaper changes, feeding etc

-we had preprinted up a way to keep track of feeds and diapers - this has been invaluable - paper and pen works for us but there are of course apps that do the same thing