The Birth Story

Sunday December 28, 2014 started off like pretty much any other day we had been having. She felt miserable, but having been told by the doctor several times that misery was to be expected, we didn't think much of it. I went to the grocery store and we spent the day in bed watching football and me writing lesson plans.

We watched the Patriots get embarrassed by the Bills and settled in to watch the Broncos/Raiders. She is a Broncos fan. Well, she's a fan of Emanuel Sanders anyway. She had just laid down and commented that she had finally found a comfortable position. I went on with my work and a few minutes later she said her water broke. I asked if she was sure and after seeing the sheets, we were both sure.

We had the bag mostly packed and threw in a few last minute things, fed the cats and we were off. We're not too far from the hospital so it didn't take too long. We got there and they took us up to labor & delivery. We didn't even go through triage since she was still leaking so they knew the babies were coming.

Our regular O/B wasn't on call so we had a different guy. He was nice enough, I guess. They gave me disposable scrubs to wear and took us to the operating room. Both babies were still breech so there was no chance of a vaginal delivery, but we already knew that. I wasn't allowed in while they prepped her and did the spinal, but she said it actually wasn't bad. When I finally did get to go in, they told me not to touch anything blue since it was sterile. I wasn't about to touch anything anyway. But as I sat down, I noticed music was playing. I had heard it in the hall but I didn't pay much attention since I thought it was just hospital hall music. But no, they pipe in music in the operating room! And what songs were my children delivered to, you ask? "You're the One That I Want" from Grease and "Shake, Shake, Shake...Shake Your Booty". I kid you not. It was really bizarre and hilarious, especially when the nurses started singing.

They said I could watch the operation if I wanted, but I wasn't particularly interested. Not that it grossed me out, I just didn't care to see it. It was surprisingly short. They were born a minute apart. Since she wasn't quite 36 weeks yet, they took them to the NICU. But they said they hoped it was just for transition and that they wouldn't have to stay long. See, before we got there triplets were born and the level 3 NICU was full. So if ours needed to stay, they would have had to transfer them to the hospital across town.

I'm not sure what I thought it would look like, but it was a bunch of baby beds and monitors. And ours weren't in beds near each other so I stayed with Charlotte for a while and then went to Nathan. I took some pictures and took them back to the recovery room. She was doing well and told me to go back to the babies. Both babies sugar was a little low so they fed them and watched them. A few hours later they were cleared to leave the NICU and we went back to the recovery room.

By this time it was getting late so we didn't have any visitors. The nurses showed us where everything was and basically left us. There is no central nursery and all the babies "room in". They basically slept for a while and every hour the nurses came to check on us. They told us newborn babies are sleepy and have to be woken to eat, and they did mostly sleep. Sometime around 2:00 in the morning a nurse came and gave them a bath and the next morning we were moved out of the recovery room and into a regular room.

We stayed in the hospital for 3 days and would have stayed longer if they let us. We had no idea how hard a c-section recovery would be. I would have to devote a whole other post just to everything that entails. But on New Years Eve we cleaned up and packed them up to go home. What was really cool was that it was snowing and we rarely get snow. It just doesn't happen here, but it made the trip home memorable.

It's been 4 weeks today and what we've done and learned in that time can fill a post on its own too.