The Twins Birth Story - Part 3

Continued on from Part 1 here and Part 2 here

Once my waters broke, things really started to kick off.

My original plan was to order the epidural immediately upon arrival at the hospital but the thought of the epidural extending my labour encouraged me to labour naturally for as long as I could handle it. 
Seemingly out of nowhere {within about thirty minutes} around 3 contractions were coming in each 10 minute window and growing increasingly stronger. It wasn't too long before I was shouting from the rooftops 'get the epidural NOW!'

Roberto my saviour anaesthetist arrived pretty quickly and was very good at his job - not only because he arrived quickly and ensured the epidural was precise {he wasn't entirely happy with his first effort so went back for round two} but mostly because he mentioned that I was 'skinny and fit' ... Pretty powerful and encouraging words when you're not feeling your most glamourous. 

Epidural was working its magic before too long but at my next check I'd only progressed to 4cm so on advice from the team I was put on the syntocin drip to help with progression. 

Around 11pm the lovely team organised a fold out bed for Pat and within minutes he was asleep. Once the drip had started I was also encouraged to get some rest and was advised they would check dilation around 5am. 

It's seriously hard to sleep, let alone rest with machines and cords hanging from you {with one attached to twin 1's head} and constant monitoring from the midwives. The doctor popped in multiple times as well and there was a lot of discussion and study of the CTG output.

Unknowns to me {thank you epidural}, I was getting up to 6 contractions in 10 minutes and twin II's heart rate was sitting dangerously high around 180-190bpm and she was moving around like crazy. Naive me thought more contractions meant quicker progress and that I'd get to meet my babies sooner. Once the midwives explained that that an ideal number is around 3 or 4 contractions every 10 minutes and anything higher means the baby doesn't have time to rest, I really did start to get anxious. 

I was running through scenarios of what was going to happen and it wasn't helping with the panic I could feel creeping in rapidly.

Would I have to have a caesarean for one baby?

For both babies?

Is Twin II in danger? 

All of this ensued while Pat was still asleep.

The resident doctor Jess who was lovely ensured me that everything was okay and was trying to problem solve before calling in the consultant who generally only makes an appearance for the birth. She wasn't overly keen on waking him without really trying to determine herself what was making twin II so distressed. By this stage the syntocin had been turned off and completely flushed out.

For what felt like hours the CTG was studied until ... light bulb moment!

Jess said let's see if you've magically dilated to 10cm - literally hours before they expected me to. 

BINGO. 

We've all ignored or forgotten about the simple solution first in a range of situations so I wasn't bothered that I wasn't checked earlier - just relieved that we had an answer. 

It seemed my body just needed a little hit of the drug to really get things going and by little, really little. I later found out initially the drip was set to release 1ml then 2ml and then back down to 1, completely turned off and then flushed out. The maximum that it can be turned up to is 32!

Pat woke to the news of 'it's time to push' and basically avoided all the drama. The midwives were so supportive throughout that I didn't feel the need to wake him earlier and stress both of us out. 

Now I felt scared. Pushing meant that we were going to have not one, but two babies soon. But it also meant I had to push and given my two hour pushing experience with Ned, I wasn't excited about it at all. 

My pushing was good and progress was being made quickly but the team asked permission to use a vacuum to expedite delivery for twin I so we could get twin II out as quickly as possible. Six minutes of pushing and twin I was out at 3:21am weighing 2.285kgs.

A quick examination and ultrasound confirmed that twin II was in a breech position and we had a 10-15 minute window to get her out. Once it gets past that time period an emergency c-section may be required so I pushed as hard as I could. Twin II was out safely at 3:34am after 13 minutes of pushing and entered the world bum first complete with her first poo on the outside world. She weighed 3.205kgs.

She was quickly whisked away to the team of doctors and the birth report details she was resuscitated due to severe asphyxia/respiratory distress. I was kind of oblivious to the drama and then didn't really even get to see her for hours afterwards as she was moved to the special care nursery attached to the CPAP machine. I felt comforted knowing she was in safe hands and still had to birth the placenta/s.

I only birthed one placenta even though I was expecting to birth two so we assume the two placentas fused together in the womb or pregnancy scans were interpreted incorrectly and there really only was one. We may get DNA testing in the future but we are pretty certain they are not identical.  

Twin 1 who we named Frankie stayed with me for some time for skin to skin and feeding and then joined her sister Evie in the special care nursery.

We spent four nights in the special care nursery {Evie was on CPAP and antibiotics for two days} and both girls were admitted due to their size. The nurses were wonderfully supportive and the stay was made that little bit better because I had my own room back on the ward. 

The girls were born on Tuesday and we got to go home on Saturday.

  

Then the fun started...

The Twins Birth Story - Part 2

Continued on from Part 1 - read here

Was I surprised I was only 3cm and not really in active labour? Actually, I was kind of happily surprised I was even 3cm - I assumed I would have only been 1cm given my pretty 'normal' state. As the midwife was continuing on with her assessment we were told that I'd probably be advised to go home and play the waiting game and thus all hope that my wishful thinking was working was diminished.

Just as the examination was finishing and I'd been delivered my disappointing news, the midwife removed her hand and exclaimed that it looked like the resulting discharge was too great a quantity to not be my waters.

Wait, what?!

You see, earlier we'd been chatting about her just 'accidentally' breaking my waters - well it wasn't so much of a chat - it was more of a request from me with the promise of keeping it top secret.

But no. My lovely midwife politely refused my request and I was left wondering if I should have asked for a different caregiver.

Damn ethics.

But seriously, what a coincidence. 

One second we're faced with the prospect of returning home and literally the next, it was GO time.

The midwife had not yet confirmed that my waters had broke and instead let me to go freshen up. As I got off the bed and walked the few steps to the toilet there was no doubt that indeed my waters had broken. A stream of liquid ran down each leg in a kind of surprising, hilarious event as I didn't experience that in my first labour.

We knew then that we would be meeting our princesses soon.

To be continued ...

The Twins Birth Story - Part I

When I found out I was pregnant with twins, I cried.

Hysterically.

Not happy tears.

disbelief and terror an hour or so after finding out {12 weeks + 5 days}

It took some time to come to grips with the reality but as time went on I began to become excited about twins.

Superficially I also was excited that I wouldn't have to endure a "full-term" pregnancy like I did with Ned who was four days over. My naivety led me to believe that all twins were born early - ideally around the 36 week mark.

But as that day approached, and disappeared, I was quite happy that they were still safe and secure in the confines of my belly and that they would come out when they were ready. Plus, I was totally again, naive, about special care requirements for babies born early.

Yet again my mindset changed when I was given an induction date. It was to be the night before I was 38 weeks meaning I would more than likely give birth bang on 38 weeks pregnant.

That spurred me on to get them out sooner and not have to go through the induction process. Last pregnancy I tried some of the ways that are supposed to naturally induce labour - a ridiculously hot vindaloo curry {never again}, long walks, and even the deed. Clearly none of those methods worked so this time around I didn't bother researching what else I could try via Dr Google.  Instead, I remained active throughout the whole term {for many weeks this meant barefoot group fitness classes} and hoped that that, combined with wishful and positive thinking might convince the twins to come out sooner, and without intervention.

The Sunday night before my planned Wednesday evening induction was spent mostly awake and restless. I had myself convinced that 'this was it' but when it all basically subsided on Monday I was left disappointed and thinking that induction was a certainty. Throughout the day I was in a bit of a bi-polar state wanting to rest and then wanting to keep busy and active in the hopes of getting the labour going. By late afternoon and really with nothing worse than period pain I'd been texting my student midwife and we both agreed that I should at least go up to birth suite to see where I was at. I think even then I was over exaggerating my symptoms.

My birth plan as organised with the team of obstetricians at the hospital was a natural birth with a planned epidural. We had discussed going to the hospital whenever I felt like I was in labour to make sure that twin I was still in a head down position, and suitable for a vaginal delivery, and to get the epi organised early so I didn't really have to endure too much pain.

We arrived at birth suite around 7:30pm after calling through a couple of hours earlier and I'm sure the team thought it was a joke that we were even there. Even I knew that I was not in active labour showing absolutely no signs of discomfort and felt like a bit of a fraud being there but I just wanted to be in labour {remember the aforementioned wishful thinking}

Regardless of my {non-active labour} state we were admitted into a room and left to chat, listen to the football on the radio and bounce like a crazy woman on the exercise ball trying to get things going. Again, the midwives could see I wasn't really in any pain and after around an hour or so they examined me to see where I was at.

Three centimetres and early labour was the news.

To be continued ...