So, I never wrote down Isabelle's birth story...mostly because I don't remember much because I was out of it for the delivery and first day/day and a half of her life. Well...this time I have the same excuse but even my mom is requesting I blog the story. (Probably so she can make me go back and read it if I ever get baby hungry...)
On Monday the 27th, I had a scheduled appointment with my doctor in the late morning. I did what any other normal pregnant woman would do: sat at the computer all morning so I would swell earlier in the day and therefore have something to show the doctor and try and convince him to deliver me. I had been swelling for about a week and a half...and bad too. Plus a new symptom had popped up since my update a week earlier: bruising. You couldn't touch my back because my kidneys, spine and tailbone were bruised from being kicked too much by the babies. Super painful...and made riding in cars incredibly painful. Anyways, Curt and I went to my doctor's appointment and found out I still had not even started to progress towards labor. I honestly think I never would have. However we did learn that not only was I swelling, I was dumping protein and my blood pressure which was 112/60 the previous week had gone up to 150/90. So the doctor diagnosed me with pregnancy induced hypertension and told me I probably had toxemia. He sent me to the hospital with orders for 24 hour bed rest and monitoring to see if my blood pressure would come down. Then he would reevaluate after the 24 hours.
So Curt and I went to get a sandwich and pack (I never pack ahead...the nesting period never comes) and we headed over to the hospital. After getting me all situated, Curt went back to work to get a couple more hours in case he wouldn't be able to work the rest of the week, and I started getting poked and prodded and monitored and giving my life history to the nurses. Within the first hour of being there I had a sonogram to check on the babies and see how far they've progressed. The doctor made me lay flat on my back for the entire 30 minute ordeal...which was very rough because of the 13+ pounds of baby in me and the bruising, but I some how made it through. The sonogram went well. The doctor checked their hearts tons and as much as she could see of other stuff. It was apparently hard to see much else with so much baby in me. :) After her sonogram she definitely recommended the girls be delivered. The doctor told me that she saw no reason to not deliver, that she would and that she would recommend to my doctor via a phone call that he deliver. I told her she was an angel. :)
Back to my room I went to get interrogated some more and monitors were put on my belly. It took two hours to get both monitors on. The reason it took so long is the nurses couldn't locate two separate heart beats and the babies moved so much that even when they did get locked on to one heartbeat, they would lose it within a couple of minutes. Once again, can I tell you how horrible this two hours was? I had to lay in the same position plus my belly was very swollen and on the underside it was so swollen that to even lightly touch it was extremely painful. Every single time a nurse rolled over that six inch wide spot it felt like she had a knife and was slicing me open. I wanted to die. By the time they got the monitors on and I stayed on them for an hour and a half, I hurt soooo bad and was counting the minutes down until the nurse came back in to take them off. Oh and by the way...I was having contractions the whole time too. Apparently they weren't just Braxton Hicks I was having...except the contractions weren't sending me into labor either though. By the time I was finally left alone Curt made it back to be bored with me. A couple of hours later we were told that after talking to several people and several phone calls, my doctor finally decided to schedule a c-section. (It irritated me that he was still so reluctant to do it...) FYI...I was always going to have a c-section since Isabelle was born via c-section and both babies were breach. Late that night Curt went home to sleep since there wasn't a bed in our room and he wanted to be able to go see Isabelle at his parent's house in the morning before he would be away from her for a long time with me and the babies. Heidi was also having surgery on Tuesday the 28th to get her tonsils out so my mom was going to be at another hospital about an hour away from my hospital, so Isabelle spent the night at my in-laws.
Since my surgery wasn't scheduled until 1:00, I didn't get moved to start the prep until 11:30. When I did get moved, I was upset cause I got moved to a gurney bed. Think very narrow and no comfort. After sitting on it for a while and getting numb from that, I eventually had to lay down on it. Since it was so narrow though, I couldn't move, so when I found out my surgery was postponed until one of my doctor's patients delivered her baby (she was at a 7), I was very disappointed.
Eventually though my turn came. It actually didn't take as long as I thought. Lucky random woman. Anyway, I was wheeled into the scary OR and given my spinal. It hurt much worse than the epidural I was given for Isabelle. Something a little strange...so my belly was sooo big (I should have taken one last picture, but I didn't) that they had to tape it up. Meaning they took a masking-like tape and put it on my belly and over my shoulders to hold up my belly enough to make the incision. (You can see it in the below picture...)
I've been anxious and not looking forward to the surgery at all so during the surgery I really tried not to think about what was going on. For the delivery of Ella it worked decently well. I didn't panic or cry or anything. I even heard her cry...which I didn't get to with Isabelle. However when my doctor went to deliver Emery, I think that's when things started to go wrong. For the last week/week-and-a-half of my pregnancy Emery had moved even higher up in my right rib. Although she moved tons, she never moved out of my rib. When the doctor delivered Emery, he literally had to dig her out of my rib. During this time, I couldn't breathe. When I told the nurse I couldn't breathe, she gave me something via my IV that all but put me completely under. From that point on till the next morning is all fuzzy and I have few random memories. I remember a nurse bringing Ella over to me and sticking her in my face. So close that I couldn't focus and therefore I couldn't see her. I also remember thinking, "I didn't hear the [second] baby cry. Is she okay?" Other than that, I don't recall almost anything until the next morning.
So what's missing from my memory? Well, a lot apparently. After the babies were born, Curt went into a separate side room with them. I guess it was there that they decided the girls would be admitted to the NICU for 6-24 hours. They were breathing too fast...about 90 bpm instead of 30-60 bpm. So, to the NICU they went. To fast forward a little bit, the girls ended up staying just under 48 hours. Their breathing normalized after six hours or so. During that time they had to have feeding tubes since all their energy went to breathing. They were kept there longer though because they were both spitting up so they wanted to keep them under observation. They were released Thursday morning.
Back to my surgery. We don't really know a ton after this point and definitely didn't know what was going on at the time, probably because they don't want people to panic, but it wasn't good. When Curt came back to my part of the OR, he did notice a lot of blood on the floor, especially compared to Isabelle's delivery. We definitely know that I lost a ton of blood. The nurse later told me that after sewing up my uterus, the doctor opened me back up because of clotting. We don't know anything about that other than it happened.
After my surgery, I was taken back to the room I waited to go into surgery in. I'm not sure how long I was there before a nurse started pushing on my belly trying to find the top of my uterus, but I don't think it was long after I was put in the room. The nurse couldn't find it though, so she called in another nurse. This nurse couldn't find it either, so they called in a third nurse. Apparently, these nurses weren't too bright, because even the third nurse couldn't find it. They finally called in the doctor, who found it right away just below my belly button. I guess it shrunk really fast. Can I tell you how painful this process was? Curt says I kept saying "Owww, owww, owww" and I remember grabbing one of the nurses arms and telling her to stop. I was very grateful when the doctor solved the problem. It was when I was in this room that I was given my first unit of blood. I also had to have some sort of warming and massaging things put on my legs so I didn't get blood clots from the swelling I was still experiencing. Honestly, that was kind of nice. After all that, I was still in that room for a couple more hours. Curt left me long enough to go check on the babies and get a hamburger in the cafeteria. Unless someone checked on me during that time, he says we were there without anyone checking on us for several hours...as I was getting a blood transfusion. He was annoyed...
We were finally moved upstairs to postpartum. In this room I was given a second unit of blood. Other than that, this room was pretty uneventful. I was only there for an hour or two. They decided that I needed one-on-one nurse care so, back down to labor and delivery I went. This was around 9:00 that night.
In my labor and delivery room I was given a second IV so they could give me more blood. Over the course of the night I was given two more units...totaling four. I believe it took all night to get this much blood. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and thinking how red the blood looked in the tube leading to the IV. I also remember feeling bad for Curt having to sleep on a small couch instead of the pull down beds they have upstairs. The only other memory I think I have is being so exhausted that I literally couldn't hold my mouth closed. It was wide open all night...embarrassing. Especially since the one-on-one nurse care meant she spent a lot of the night in my room monitoring me. As soon as I was given all the blood, they started me on a bag of plasma. They said something about the plasma helping the blood "take." I guess at this point the plasma was also to help my kidneys. My kidneys had started to not function. Gratefully I made it through the night. When I woke up that morning I was greeted by my nurse, Stephanie and immediately told that I've had everyone very worried. It was then that I found out about being opened up twice in the OR. I was also told that in her four years of working in labor and delivery, the nurse had only ever seen one other woman get four units of blood and she had never seen anyone get plasma before. Don't you love how during this whole time, they never talked to Curt and told him what was going on or that they were seriously worried? I spent most of the day still down in labor and delivery. I still don't remember much from this day, although I was awake for half of it. My mom and dad made it up that afternoon and my mom stayed with us until we were moved again. At some point during that time she also talked to my nurse and got more information out of her than we ever did since Curt isn't the questioning type and I was still out of it. Even now, my mom talks of the whole ordeal a lot more seriously and frightfully that Curt and I do, and I think that is the reason...
After almost a full day down in labor and delivery I was finally better enough that I could go up stairs to meet my babies and recover in postpartum (my forth and final recovery room). This too wasn't without it's difficulties. When they were ready to move me, I got the choice of whether I wanted to ride in a wheel chair or on a gurney bed. Anxious to see my babies sitting up instead of uncomfortably laying down, I chose the wheel chair. Wrong decision... Unfortunately once I finally stood up, I lost a lot of blood and the nurses wanted to be safe so I had to lay down on the gurney. Ugh. However at 5:00, 27 hours after I had them, I finally got to meet my babies. While carrying them, I already felt more bonded to these girls than I ever did Isabelle. Being forced to be away from them for their first day of life was especially hard and even bitter. I was so excited to see them and touch them. It is truly amazing how much you can love someone you've just met.
It was while meeting them that they officially were named. We already had the name Emery picked out. Although we never decided on a second name, we did have a handful of names to pick from. Curt had already decided that Baby B looked more like an Emery than Baby A, so she was named Emery. It was then up to us to decide a name for Baby A. As soon as I saw Ella though, I knew she was an Ella. It wasn't until the next day or two, and after several phone calls from the Birth Certificate and insurance people that we officially decided on middle names.
So that's it...their birth story. While this account ends on the 29th, we didn't get to leave the hospital until the 1st. We still had several days of recovery and trying to get better enough that we could go home. However, we were all able to leave the hospital together...and that's what we had prayed and hoped for.
