XP: Claire & Paige are here! **LONG**

Brummy14

It's been a CRAZY, insane week -- but here's the story (and a few photos!) 

On late Saturday night (28w4d), one of the girls' sacs ruptured -- but it was such a slow leak, I thought it was urine and/or discharge. It was so inconsistent that I didn't even go into the hospital until Monday...but sure enough, ruptured.

I was ambulanced to a nearby hospital with a Level 3 NICU -- and after 48 hours on mag (gross) and the steroid shots, everything was pretty calm. Until Thursday night, when my water completely broke (there was no debating it this time!), and I started having contractions shortly thereafter.

By around 11 PM, I was really uncomfortable, so they checked to see if I was dilated (I was still only 1cm -- same as I was on Monday), but they went ahead and put an epidural in around 2AM and started me back on the magnesium sulfate (that stuff is NASTY!) -- hoping that would be enough to calm down the contractions and they could eventually pull me off all of it within 12-24 hours.

Well, after a pretty un-restful evening (even with the epidural, I wasn't completely comfortable) -- by 6:30 AM I was still feeling pain (albeit of a very different variety by that point) -- so they eventually got a nurse into the room, and resident to do the check -- and sure enough, was fully dilated, and Paige was actually trying to make her way out (he could see her!). They didn't have enough time to get the epidural dose up enough so I was 100% numb (they said I technically shouldn't have been able to feel any pain -- even though I was), so they had to put me to sleep (which was actually fine -- I was so stressed out at that point, I'm not sure being awake for that would have helped at all). Heck, it was probably all of 15 minutes from the time they did the cervical check and saw Paige -- to the point at which they had delivered them both.

I don't completely understand all of the c-section options (heck, I didn't even know there *were* options), but the version they did was the horizontal incision on the outside, and a vertical one inside. I think it had to do with the fact that Paige had literally descended as low as she did -- so they more or less had to pull her back up. Regardless, that means I'll never be able to deliver a baby vaginally given the way they did this -- again, not a huge deal, but I had never heard of that "version" of a c-section before! And, I still don't entirely understand what makes this version restrict a future vaginal delivery versus the other varieties, but I have lots of time to learn all about that.

The girls are doing FANTASTIC, for having decided to arrive at 29w3d! They were both breathing on their own pretty much from the get-go (Claire did go on the ventilator for 12 hours just as a safety net). I've been able to kangaroo care both of them once, but they're now both under the jaundice lights, so I won't get to hold them for a few days until they get their bilirubin levels back down. Both also had their PICC lines inserted yesterday, which also went very smoothly, so here's to hoping for a continued, uneventful stay over the coming weeks and months!