On a Tuesday, I started having contractions about five minutes apart. My friend drove me to the hospital, where they checked me out and gave me medication to stop the contractions. They were able to get things under control and did a fetal fibronectin test. It's a test that is 99% accurate in predicting if you'll go into labor within the next two weeks. My test came up negative, so they sent me home.
Apparently I'm one of the lucky 1%. At 4:00 on Friday morning, I woke up to find that I was bleeding. A lot. I woke Tim up and, of course, he didn't react well to the blood. He headed to the closet and spent several minutes on the floor, trying not to pass out.
They did an ultrasound to determine where the bleeding was coming from. We later determined it was my cervix. My doctor gave me lots of medication to stop my contractions, but they didn't have much of an impact.
She finally decided that these babies were coming, so she was going to take the cerclage stitch out of my cervix. Before she started, they hooked up my epidural. Sweet relief!
The cerclage was trickier to take out than usual. Since I had been laboring all day, it was embedded into my cervix. The doctor was able to cut the knot that was holding it together, but the rest of the stitch wouldn't come out. The plan was to just let the contractions work it out.
Over time, I still wasn't dilating much. I asked my nurse how I would be able to tell when it was time since I already had the epidural working its magic. She said to let her know if I felt any pressure.
Well, the pressure came. And with it a bunch of fluid. I figured it was my water breaking, but it was...more blood. I guess it was a good thing Tim was not back from a quick run to our house yet. Unfortunately, it also meant that my dreams of having a vaginal birth were thrown out the window.
As soon as my doctor saw how much blood I'd lost, everything was a whirlwind. I was moved into the operating room, where I was quickly surrounded by about twenty other people, who were moving around like crazy. Tim made it back and they let him in just before the operation started. They had heard about how green he'd been that morning, so they had a stool all ready for him by my head.
I wish I could say the c section was no big deal, but that would be a lie. It was pretty miserable. Of course, I don't have anything to compare it to since I've never done this whole 'giving birth' thing before. I felt like it took forever, but I'm pretty sure that it didn't. Both girls were born at 5:50pm. They brought "Baby A" over to my head and let me kiss her forehead before whisking her away. I never got to see "Baby B."
The next thing I remember is being in the recovery room. A man asked me if my face was naturally pale. I wasn't really sure how to respond since I had spent the last two months indoors on bedrest. I guess I was pretty pale from losing so much blood. Luckily, my body recovered well by the next morning and they didn't have to give me any more blood.
Tim came in to show me pictures of our sweet little girls. Then, it was time to see them in person. Only it's really hard to see babies in incubators while you're laying down and don't have enough energy to lift your head.
I guess that was good motivation for me to try walking later on. It was so worth it to face the pain of getting out of bed so that I could see my two sweet daughters. My husband put it well when he said, "Sunshine after a frightening storm." We are so glad that they are here and that we get to be their parents.
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