A Birth Story, told in parts (Part 2 of 2).

I can only assume most women ask their doctors one million questions about what to expect on delivery day. Not me. I figured, I'm at a good hospital, I've been in the room for 2 vaginal births and one c-section. I'm as prepared as I need to be.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

My induction was scheduled for 10am that Thursday. From what I understood (from stories from friends), they'd give me something to soften my cervix, they'd wait a bit, check me, put me on Pitocin, and then we'd wait some more. Everything would be very quiet and relatively pleasant while the Pitocin and eventual epidural worked their magic.

I took this photo as soon as we got into our hospital room. This was the only photo I took that day. 

We brought coloring books, playing cards, books, a charged iPad... these were all useless. As soon as I got there, the party started immediately as every party does: I got naked and shot up with Pitocin. An hour later, a doctor came in to check my progress for the first time. I was not prepared for how awful this would be. Apparently I have a posterior cervix? Which means that my cervix faces my... posterior? So every time I got checked, it felt like the doctor was shoving his entire forearm inside of me.

This was not hot. And this was, as they say, just the beginning.

Unimpressed with my dilation, the doctor decided to do a cervical foley, which is basically a balloon that's supposed to open up your cervix to get things going. Typically, this is just sort of uncomfortable, I guess. But for me, ti was so painful that he needed to drug me. He started with fentanyl. As he administered it, he said, "Now, this is going to feel like two martinis, really fast."

Folks, there is a reason people get addicted to this stuff. It was incredible.

It wasn't enough though, so eventually he decided he'd give me a fast-acting, temporary epidural to numb me just long enough to do this balloon thing. He expected the balloon to get me to 4cm. It got me to just under 2. The babies were not in any hurry - I think they'd heard who had been elected. They were fine to stay inside.

So we just had to wait.

The twins were rascally even then, and kept slipping out of the way of the heart monitors. This resulted in repeated lengthy ultrasounds to relocate them. This also prevented me from using the birthing ball, because those babies would not stay still and kept wiggling out of the way and falling off of the monitors. I was confined to my bed.

My mom, who birthed 2 of 3 babies without drugs, trying to offer advice...?

At my 10pm cervical check, I was 4cm. This seemed reasonable. I didn't feel like I needed the epidural, but I was exhausted and unable to sleep, so the nurses suggested I get it, just to get some rest to prepare for Game Time. So I did. An hour later, my water broke. The epidural didn't seem to be the magic I had hoped for, so when they said it was time for the catheter, I kept saying, "I'm going to feel this, I know I'm going to feel this," and they kept reassuring me, "No sweetie, you have the epidural, you won't feel it."

(I did. I did feel it. I felt it a lot.)

Finally, they upped the dosage of the epi to help me get about 60 minutes of sleep. After that, i felt every single contraction - duller, to be sure, than they would have been without any pain medicine, but certainly not pain-free or remotely comfortable.

"Are you feeling pain or pressure?" the nurse kept asking. I wanted to take her by collarless scrubs and scream in her face, "I AM FEELING ALL OF IT." Instead, I closed my eyes and said as patiently as I could, "I'm feeling painful pressure."

Enormous. Miserable.

Around 2:30 in the morning, baby A slipped off the monitor and the nurse was unable to relocate the heartbeat. This went on for about 20 minutes until she finally called the doctor in. Before I knew it, there were about six doctors and residents in my room, all taking turns trying to find this baby's heartbeat. After 35 minutes, they nailed it down and decided to put a monitor on baby A's head. Inside my body. So... forearm up the vagina again. Not exaggerating. Ask Gina, who witnessed the doctor elbow deep inside of me.

None of this is what I imagined.

A sleepless night finally gave way to morning and they came to check me. 8 cm. That's almost 10! Babies should be here in just a few hours! All the doctors were saying it! "Today is a great day to have babies!" "They might be here by lunch time!"

I was still feeling every contraction. I couldn't lie on my back at all, not even in an elevated position. I was incredibly uncomfortable, and finally my nurse said to the anesthesiologist, "We have to get her more comfortable. She's in misery." He shrugged. "If you're having back pain, there's not much I can do." He did give me a different type of epidural, which worked for about 40 minutes, and then I was back to feeling what I can only assume was a slightly duller version of what I'd be feeling if I had no drugs.

Around 8pm, I started feeling like I might be ready to push soon. It was dark outside and I was in agony, unable to lie back, unable to sleep, unable to stay in one position for more than a minute, and I started thinking in my head, I'm not going to be able to do this. There is no way. My back was screaming - the only sort of comfortable position was sitting up and bent over my belly. You can't really birth two babies like that.

My regular OB was not at the hospital that night. Dr. Canavan would be delivering my babies instead - I had no reservations about her because I had spoken to her on the phone a few days prior and she was so incredibly kind and patient with me, and talked me off of a pretty big ledge. I almost cried when I met her.

"Do you have kids?" I asked her fearfully.

"Not yet," she said with a smile.

I hesitated. "I really don't think I can do this."

"Of course you can," she said.

"I didn't realize my pain tolerance was so low..."

"No. This has nothing to do with pain tolerance. You're laboring with twins. This is the hardest thing you will ever do." God bless her. When she checked me, I was sure I was going to be at 9 or 10cm. I had been laboring all day! I was feeling the urge to push! I had to be close.

8cm. Still. Twelve hours of additional labor, on top of the 22 or so from the previous day. Eight. Centimeters.

WTF. This sucks.

It was around this time that they told me my blood work was coming back a little high, edging toward pre-eclampsia, and if I continued to not progress and my levels continued to raise, I'd need a c-section. I felt like just giving up and asking for the c-section, but I was too afraid to. I kept picturing pushing the first baby out and the doctor having to reach up inside of me for the second baby. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THEY DO FOR TWINS. There was no f*cking way.

Gina, knowing how miserable I was, asked, "If she needs a c-section, how long will it take to get her into surgery?"

"An hour and a half or so."

So we waited. I breathed. I closed my eyes. I breathed some more. I had a 10pm blood draw. At 11, they came in and said, "Okay, your levels are high and you're not progressing, so we're gonna have to do a c-section, okay?"

I nodded. Gina asked, "How long? An hour and a half?"

"Twenty minutes."

And just like that, 6 nurses came in and started prepping me for surgery -cleaning, shaving, rubbing iodine all over the place - and I was wheeled down the hall to the OR. I went into surgery around 11:20pm. After about 15 minutes of two dozen doctors & nurses getting everything ready, and the anesthesiologist drugging me, Gina was allowed back in and it was show time. I had two anesthesiologists, both explaining to me everything that was happening, everything that I should be feeling, all in a very calm voice, and repeating, "You're doing great, Katie. This is all very normal." And I realized in that minute how insane it was that I was having this major surgery in this brightly lit operating room while I was fully AWAKE.

This is pretty damn intimidating.

And then, as though it happened yesterday, I remember the moment. The moment my babies came into this world, into my life, for real. The anesthesiologist held up a mirror for me. I could feel my body moving slightly as the doctors worked to tug my babies out of me.

"Get ready," he said into my ear.

They warned me the babies might not cry at first, so when a slimy, slippery-looking baby was pulled out of me and held up for me to see, I wasn't worried when I didn't hear a cry. "It's a girl!" Dr. Canavan said.

"That's a big baby!" the anesthesiologist said.

Seraphina - 7lbs, 11oz. 21 1/4 inches.

But I barely registered that. I was confused. A girl? Baby A was a boy. WAS I ABOUT TO BE THE MOTHER OF FOUR GIRLS?!

"There's a boy in there too, right?" I asked, panicked, pleading.

More tugging. Less than a minute passed. "...and a boy!"

My favorite photo - Dr. Canavan and Kieran, 7lbs, 3 oz. 20 1/2 inches.

Again, the anesthesiologist: "Those are huge babies!"

Unlike his sister, Kieran cried the second the air hit his lungs, and when I heard his wail, so distinctive even now, I started sobbing. The nine months of anticipation hit me heard in that one moment, and I finally let myself believe that I had actually been pregnant. Every feeling you have as an expectant mother, every feeling I pushed away for fear of getting too excited, too attached, every feeling I didn't feel flooded my soul and my mind and I could barely catch my breath.

They were here. These babies I had waited for my entire life here here, and they were healthy. I had managed to keep them inside of me for 37 weeks and 6 days, and they were here, and holy shit, this is the most amazing thing in the entire universe. They came 2 days before the six year anniversary of me losing my first baby in a hospital bed.

Suddenly, my life was full of magic and wonder in a way I welcomed but was not expecting, and in a way I didn't even realize I needed. My life finally felt unquestionably whole.

Me and my littlest cubs. 

A Birth Story, told in parts.

Part 1

If you’re ever unlucky enough to lose a pregnancy, and then subsequently lucky enough to get pregnant again, your pregnancy might not be like what you see in movies or read in books, or what you imagine when you’re younger and daydreaming about having a baby. Instead of being excited, you’re nervous, from the moment of conception. Instead of talking to your baby, you are most likely ignoring it, not wanting to get too attached in case something happens. And you probably don’t even want to let the world know you’re pregnant, and somehow wish you could just hole up in a cave until it’s time for the baby to be born, and then you can say, “hey! I was pregnant and now I have a baby!”

When we finally got pregnant again, Gina asked me when we could start telling people.

“20 weeks?” I suggested.

I was pregnant with twins. This was an unreasonable suggestion, and I knew it.

We *sort of* made an announcement via social media at 14 weeks, which was 2 weeks after I lost the first pregnancy. It felt safe to do it then, after we’d seen the twins several times, and after we decided to tell the girls. We put a video up of us telling the girls about the pregnancy - but didn’t specify in the description of the video what would be happening. So unless you clicked it, you didn’t know. Which is how I got to be 6 months pregnant and a lot of people had no idea.

I told my direct supervisor early, but only because I kept falling asleep at my desk, and I realized if he walked in on my sleeping, I might lose my job. I told my close friends at work, but didn’t tell anyone else. I’ve never been a small person, and my weight has fluctuated about 40 pounds up and down over the past few years. When I got pregnant, I was the lightest I’d been since my last breakup - I had been preparing my body for a possible pregnancy. So when I gained about 15 pounds almost immediately, no one blinked an eye. And that’s how I got to be six months pregnant with twins and someone stopped me in the office kitchen and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were expecting!” And then a look of shock when I told her I was having a boy AND a girl. She had no idea I was having two.

Maddie's adoption day. 8 weeks pregnant.

23 weeks. 

I preferred the pregnancy to be a secret forever, and I had this feeling that the more people I told, the more I was putting myself at risk for heartbreak.

As an Old Pregnant Lady (over 35), I had ultrasounds every two weeks. I looked forward to and feared those ultrasounds equally. Every time the wand went across my belly, I took a deep breath. At one appointment, my OB looked at me and said, “Your babies are fine, I promise.” And every time I saw them squirming and waving and wiggling, I was surprised and overwhelmed. There they were, my two little dreams-come-true, growing quickly and blissfully unaware of their mother’s intense anxiety about whether or not they would make it out okay.

I’m pretty impressed with myself that I only dragged Gina to Labor & Delivery once, at 33 weeks, when I couldn’t feel baby girl moving. She was fine, but my BP was high, so they made me stay for about 2 hours.

Gina wanted to start talking names at 14 weeks. I told her I needed to wait until 20, even though I think we both knew what the names would be. When we finally did talk about the names, after my 20 week appointment, she said, “Seraphina Mae and Kieran Joseph?” I said, “I like Kieran James.” And then we didn’t talk about them much after that, beyond some back-and-forth about Kieran’s middle name. I refused to call the babies by their names while they were still inside of me. They were always Baby Boy and Baby Girl. There were no hashtags or personalized onesies, no pricey maternity photoshoots, and only one photo of me smiling and holding my growing belly - taken at my baby shower.

28 weeks. My baby shower.

If I had let myself feel what I wanted to feel, I’d have done it all. I would have gotten my hair done and paid someone to do my makeup, and I would’ve had beautiful photos taken in a park, of me staring lovingly at my belly, Gina kissing and laying hands on my belly, the girls hugging me, looking longingly at their siblings growing inside of me. We might have done a cute announcement. I would’ve talked every single day about how overjoyed I was, and how lucky I felt, and how excited I was to be having TWO BABIES, and that despite how physically miserable I was, I loved that they were inside of me, kicking and pushing each other and rolling around.

Instead, I stayed pretty quiet about it, and just prepared myself every day that people were going to always ask me about it. How are you feeling? When are you done with work? What’s your due date? How are the babies? I don’t know how you’re managing this. Are the girls excited?

I get it. It’s a damn miracle, and people are interested, and they should be. It’s incredible.

As the Big Day got closer, I started to let myself think this might actually happen. I hauled my rapidly growing body to Cedars twice a week for non-stress tests the last six weeks of the pregnancy, and while this was the opposite of fun, I loved that I never had to go more than a few days without hearing their heartbeats. I trusted the nurse when she said that my diagnosis of excess amniotic fluid was nothing to worry about, because the staff at Cedars had their eyes on me and I started to have a strong faith that they really were not going to let anything bad happen. (They came through in spades - more on that later.)

NST. Huge belly, scarred from my miscarriage.

When my doctor asked me my birth plan, I said, “Just get them out alive, and keep me alive. That’s it.”

I did want to try for a vaginal birth. I knew it would help with breastfeeding, and with post-partum depression. But baby A vacillated between breech and transverse for the last 8 weeks of the pregnancy, so we scheduled a c-section.

And then, 48 hours before that scheduled c-section, at my NST appt, the nurse said, “Oh look at that! He’s head down.”

I called my OB, and after some back and forth and indecisiveness, I told her I was just going to stick with the c-section.

“Really?” she said, disappointed.

“I mean, do you think I should try vaginal?” I was desperate to get them out, but I was even more desperate for someone else to make this decision for me.

“I want you to do what you feel comfortable with, but one of the first things you told me when you came to see me was you wanted to try to give birth vaginally.” She sensed my hesitation. “You can do this.”

That’s what I needed to hear. “Let’s do it. Let’s schedule the induction.”

Final belly shot. 37 weeks.

...to be continued.