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.