Operation Impending Doom 2: Our Twin Birth Story

Wellp. They’re here.

Invisible/imaginary readers, it is my great pleasure to introduce my son and daughter, who will be known as A and M on this blog. They’re only a couple months old, so their personalities aren’t terribly distinct (they eat, they sleep, they poop, they cry,) but here are little mini bios of them so far.

Baby A, AKA: The Princeling, Little Hawk

My sweet son. A was born nearly a pound lighter than M, and according to many, he’s the spitting image of his Daddy. He’s a gentle presence, even when he’s fussing, but both his dimpled smile and his piteous and slightly histrionic little cry hit me directly in the heart. He makes the most hilarious expressions. I can’t tell you how many pictures I’ve taken of him when he’s fallen asleep with his mouth hanging open. He looks like a little frat guy passed out after a night of heavy drinking (may he never end up actually doing that.)

Baby M, AKA: The Velocilatcher, my Dothraki Screamer, The Warrior

My daughter is only two months old and she’s already a force to be reckoned with. Never still, she’s a wriggling, flailing, fussing little monster with an often-voracious appetite and a set of lungs you wouldn’t believe. She’s all chub and cheeks and olive skin and she bears a striking resemblance to me as a newborn. M loves to be almost violently rocked and absolutely despises—despises—being put down to sleep on her own. She will cry relentlessly in her bassinet only to drop into a deep sleep the moment we pick her up or place her on her tummy against our chests.

Those are my little twins so far, from what we can glean. I don’t know if their personalities are just projections we’ve placed on them at this point, but if they’re consistent, I have a feeling A will have me wrapped around his finger and M is going to be my karma incarnate—I was a nightmarish little kid.

So, let’s do this, because it’s finally over: The birth story.

I dropped off on my original plan to write about each trimester just after it occurs, but the short and sweet of my pregnancy is this: It fucking sucked. Yeah, yeah, it was a beautiful miracle and my body was a temple and I was a nature goddess forming new life and blah, blah, blah, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it. At 5’3 and around 115 lbs before pregnancy, carrying twins was never not going to be a challenge. I was expecting discomfort from all the extra weight and hormones, but wow. Just…just wow. As mentioned in my post about my first trimester, I was in a constant state of nausea and was pretty much one with the couch cushions. The second trimester, when all the books tell you you’ll feel great, was…let’s say, mixed. I was no longer relentlessly ill, and I finally started growing the baby bump I so desired. However, as I had twins, that cute little bump grew big and grew fast. I was always measuring a few weeks ahead of where I actually was, so it was a bit more like I had two third trimesters. Other than heartburn, which was remarkably infrequent, I pretty much had all the symptoms. Dizziness, leg cramps, sciatic nerve pain, bloating, insatiable thirst, Restless motherfucking Leg Syndrome, insomnia…just everything, all at once. I had been looking forward to picking up prenatal yoga after being too sick for it in the first trimester, but…nope. I couldn’t even walk more than a block without doubling over or crouching in pain/breathlessness, chugging water all the way as if I had just sprinted five miles.

By the time the third trimester came around, I was immobile. Everything was exhausting, from walking the dog to making a quick meal. My entire body hurt, and I’m not exaggerating when I say my entire body. I had to leave work earlier than planned, and that plus the forced inactivity nearly drove me insane. I stubbornly painted my dining room table and chairs just to keep busy, even though it was painful and exhausting. Though I was lucky enough not to have any serious complications (though I did end up in the hospital three times, twice for early contractions. I was diagnosed with an ‘irritated uterus.’ I mean, if you were normally the size of a clenched fist and suddenly you’re carrying two multiple-pound, constantly-wriggling creatures, you’d be irritated, too,) my pregnancy was incredibly difficult, stressful, and scary.

As you can imagine, by the time November rolled around, I was done. Done. Other than the vast array of symptoms and the forced idleness, I was tired of being in my OB’s office every two weeks, and then every week in November. My OB continued to insist that I could go into labour at any moment, and I would deliver quickly, so I had to go to the hospital the moment contractions began. To me, it felt like my uterus was a ticking time bomb. All the panic and anxiety of the first trimester came back amplified. As much as I wanted my pregnancy to be over, birth is an unpredictable and often dangerous thing. A, who was closest to my cervix (ironically they call that “Baby A,”) had flipped to the breach position somewhere around 12 weeks and stubbornly remained that way, so we did not have the option to have vaginal birth.* We planned a c-section for November 19^th with absolutely no one expecting me to carry my hellspawn all the way to 38 weeks. By November, every cramp and Braxton Hicks contraction was met with me clutching my belly and muttering, “Oh, fuck, okay, am I in labour?”

By late October, I was seeing my OB weekly for something called non-stress tests (or NSTs) and cervical checks. During a NST, nurses slather your belly in gel and strap on little censors that monitor your babies’ heartbeats and your contractions, if you’re having any. If the baby’s heartbeat is low or they’re showing signs of distress, you get shipped off to the hospital and may end up delivering.

Getting a NST on my birthday.

Surprisingly, NSTs never triggered my anxiety, even when one sent me to the hospital at 28 weeks (my OB was extremely concerned about my having contractions so early. Turned out to be my irritated uterus and nothing major.) I still don’t know if this is actually true, but I’d convinced myself that if I felt the babes moving, everything was okay. And man, the babes moved. All the time. I lost a lot of sleep because they rarely stopped moving. So long as I felt my little sea monsters squirming, I was able to quell any fears that something was wrong with them.

On November 16^th, I didn’t even want to get my NST. All of my “natural” labour induction attempts—raspberry leaf tea, dates, even a “labour-inducing cupcake”—had failed, and I was three days from our scheduled C-section. At this point in the pregnancy, every footstep was an effort, and every cervical check was incredibly uncomfortable.

“Oh, wow,” my OB said after every check in the last month. “I have to be careful, or I’m going to break your water. They are right there. I’ll be shocked if you make it another few days.”

Well, at this point, it looked like I was going to make it to my due date, and I was sick of hearing that.

When the nurse, Elise (when you’re in the office every week, you get to know everyone,) led me into my appointment, she stared at my stomach and shook her head.

“I cannot believe you’re still pregnant,” she said as she strapped the censors across my belly.

“Girl, tell me about it.” I replied with a sigh. “I never thought I was going to make it to the 19^th.”

Well…

Around ten minutes later, Elise returned to look at the readout from the NST. She frowned.

“Hm…Baby A’s a little flat,” she said. “Nothing to worry about, just drink this cranberry juice and see if they perk up.”

            My heart jump started. I tried to smile and keep calm as Elise handed me the can of Welch’s to spike my/the babies’ blood sugar, but internally, my mind was racing. Flat. Flat? What did that mean? Was the baby’s heartbeat slow? Were they not moving enough? I resisted the urge to poke my right side, where Baby A resided. I’d just felt them move…hadn’t I? Or had it been Baby B? It had been easy to suss out who was moving when they had first started with their tiny kicks and flutters, but now they were gigantic and entwined in my womb. What if Baby A had been in distress this whole time and I had lulled myself into a false sense of security with my stupid “if they’re moving, they’re fine” theory?

            I chugged the disgusting juice like it was the Elixir of Life.

            My OB came in a few minutes later to check on Baby A’s progress. Now, my OB is amazing. She’s blunt, confident, and always seems calm and unfazed by any twist and turns my pregnancy made.

            When I become anxious, especially regarding something medical, I become hyper-vigilant when it comes to the behaviour of the people around me. So when my OB looked at the NST results, it was obvious to me that something was up. Her eyebrows shot up immediately.

            “All right,” she said, her tone like that of a no-nonsense mother. “Baby A’s a little flat, so I’m going to send you to the hospital. I could call you an ambulance, but honestly, you’ll get there sooner if you just drive. Just promise me you won’t stop for food or anything.”

            I must have looked as petrified as I felt, because she continued.

            “It’s not a big deal,” she assured me. “I just want the hospital to do their own NST. There’s about a 50/50 chance the baby will perk up and they’ll just send you home. You’re only 3 days away from the C-section we scheduled, anyway. They’re full term. They’re probably fine. Just go to the hospital. Now.”

            I didn’t need to be told twice. I flew out of my OB’s office like it had just burst into flame. My husband was at work, on his last day of training for a promotion. We normally text each other. Today, I called him. He knew what a phone call meant at this point in the pregnancy.

            “Are you okay?” he asked the moment he picked up the phone.

            I explained everything as I half-ran to my car. Because we had a 50/50 shot of today being a birthday, I told him it was really his call as to whether or not he wanted to leave work. Luckily, he decided to err on the side of caution and leave.

            “I’d regret it the rest of my life if I weren’t there when they were born,” he said.

            The 8-minute drive to the hospital was a blur, and soon I was in a gown getting hooked up to the same NST monitors as in my OB’s office with a friendly nurse named Holly, who ended up being with me the entire time.

            As Holly and the other (friendly, wonderful, and reassuring) nurses monitored my babes, who wriggled and writhed within me as if responding to my nerves, I tried to keep myself calm. If anything was wrong, I was in the perfect place. A surgical team could get them out in less than an hour if they needed to. Hubby was on his way. If everything ended up being fine and we kept our C-section appointment three days from now, well, then Hubby and I would get to relax the rest of today and enjoy the pre-twin peace. My heart still thudded in my chest like I was being stalked by a slasher from an 80s movie.

            At some point, Hubby came in with our pre-packed hospital bag, so nervous and excited he was practically shaking. We waited, listening to the monitors beeping and the whooshing sound that came whenever the babes moved.

            After what seemed like an eternity, the OB who was in that day, a short, fairly nondescript older white lady, entered the room with two or three miscellaneous nurses.

            “Well, both babies seem just fine,” she said.

            Relief came in a wave. My muscles relaxed so quickly I felt dizzy. I released my unintentional death-grip on Hubby’s hand.

            “However,” the OB continued.

            Instantly, I was tense as a coiled serpent again. What was wrong? Holly had said my blood pressure was fine. Was something wrong with an umbilical cord? Did one of their placentas miraculously move over my cervix and cause the most unlikely case of placenta previa?

            Hubby squeezed my hand as if he could read my ridiculous thoughts. The squeeze reminded me to breathe.

            “Baby A’s heart rate is okay, but just a little lower than we’d like, and you’re only three days from your scheduled C-section, so, how would you like to have these babies today?”

            “Today?” the word tumbled out of my mouth before the OB’s question fully hit me. “Today today? Like, tonight?”

            The OB smiled. “Oh, no. We’d want to deliver you in an hour or two.”

            The next two hours were a blur. Nurses came and went. The surgeon/OB, her resident, and the anesthesiologist all entered, introduced themselves, and vanished.  At some point, Hubby ended up in scrubs. The OB told him that they were going to take me away and come get him when they were ready to make the incision. For me, that meant I would be without him for the most terrifying part of the surgery: The epidural.

Ohhhh, shit, we're having babies today!

            The C-section itself is still very vivid in my mind. I remember the cold blast of air that hit me when I entered the OR. I’ll never understand why ORs are always so cold, but I’m sure there’s a reason. I knew from my excessive research on twin C-sections that there were going to be a lot of people in the room; the surgeon, their team, and multiple nurses assigned to each baby. I was still struck by the amount of people in the room. They gathered around me in a semi-circle as Holly sat me down on the operating table. The resident, a young man with smooth brown skin and absolutely perfect teeth whom I vaguely recall meeting during the 2-hour blur while waiting for the surgery, flashed me a blinding smile.

            “Okay, Danielle, you mentioned to me that needles make you nervous, but you’re going to be absolutely fine, okay?” he said. “Here, hug this pillow and curl around it so your back makes a C-shape.”

            I don’t remember telling him about my fear of needles, but if he hadn’t already known, he knew now. I felt the colour drain from my face in a cold wash of panic.

            Breathe, I told myself. Nut up, you baby. People get this done all the time.

            I remained terrified. Before we discovered we were having twins, I had planned on attempting a natural birth; not for any romantic ideas about birth or delusion about my pain tolerance, but because I am that freaked out by the idea of a long needle being shoved between my vertebrae.

            The resident and his hoard gathered around me in a semi-circle, all smiles and bright eyes. I clutched the pillow like Rose clutched the floating door in Titanic. I’m sure the anesthesiologist made himself known to me before he was behind me, but I didn’t remember. The cold wipe of iodine along my spine made me jump like a spooked horse.

            “So, Danielle sells tea as a side business!” Holly said to the crowd around me.

            Every face brightened as if tea were the most fascinating subject on the planet.

            “Oh, wow!” said the resident, his voice glowing with fake enthusiasm. “What kind of tea do you sell? You could have a huge customer base at the hospital. All of my nurses are tea drinkers!”

            I normally despise people using this sort of manipulation on me, as if I were a small child trying to converse with bored adults, but I grabbed the painfully obvious rope they were dangling in front of me and talked about tea while they pretended to be fascinated. Anything was better than knowing that any second now, a massive needle was going to-

            It was over with a pinch and a burn.

            “Thanks for the distraction,” I said to the group, trying not to sound begrudging. Holly nodded with a grin, but the rest of the medical staff had dispersed as if a countdown clock had started the minute the needle went into my spine.

            If this twin pregnancy adventure has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t do well when vulnerable. I cannot emphasize how much I hate being out of control of my body; how disconcerting and surreal it is to me. I’ve had multiple surgeries in my life, and though I was frightened and uncomfortable each time, I knew this was going to be a singularly eerie experience for me because I would actually be awake.

I’m not sure what I was expecting of the epidural, but it surprised me that the only warning I got from my body was the slightest tingling sensation before my legs became two limp anchors attached to my body. Just like that, I became an object. Holly and the medical staff still talked to me like a human being, but that was my feeling regardless. The nurses swung my legs onto the operating table like butchers tossing huge hunks of meat into a deep freezer. I felt my lower half hit the table and settle, but there was no…sensation. No pain, no cold, just…pressure and presence is the best way I can describe it.

I lay on the operating table, a blue curtain blocking my body from the breasts down, my arms extended out on either side of me in a Christ-like pose. I had read that surgeons sometimes tied down your arms because the drugs make a lot of people shake uncontrollably. I was grateful they didn’t tie me down; it would have only made me feel all the more helpless. My arms did tremble, though, quite violently. This little body of mine is not built to withstand hard drugs with any measure of grace.

Unbelievably, my fear dissolved the moment Hubby entered the OR and sat by my side. Just like that, it was all okay. My fear was gone, and my excitement emerged from wherever it had been hiding for the past fifteen minutes.

Pretty much my view during the surgery.

“Are you ready to meet our babies?” I asked.

Hubby smiled and took my hand, “I’m ready to meet our babies.”

“Good,” I said, “because they need to get the fuck out of me.”

            Behind the blue curtain, the OB’s team chatted as they worked. I felt pressure occasionally, but nothing more. I didn’t know when they cut me open. However, I could guess by the way I started to jostle around, as if I were a trunk they were rifling through. As I talked to Hubby, my upper half flailed limply, jerking this way and that, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity.

            The OB entered the OR at some point, but a pair of bright blue eyes hovering over a surgeon’s mask blocked my view of her.

            “How are we doing, Danielle?” the anesthesiologist asked.

            I opened my mouth to say, “just fine, thanks,” but suddenly, I wasn’t fine.

            “I don’t feel right,” I said immediately.

To this day, that is the best way I can describe what was happening to me. The sensation that invaded me is so difficult to describe. It lived somewhere between vertigo and dissociation, not quite dizziness, not quite unreality. Distantly I felt that I should be alarmed, but I was trapped in this bizarre purgatory of feeling. The world shrank, ending just at my fingertips. My lower half was gone. The curtain was gone. My husband was gone.

The anesthesiologist, however, did not seem alarmed. His voice, calm and upbeat, cut through the fog.

“That’s because your blood pressure is dropping,” he explained. “Okay. How do you feel now?”

The fog was gone as suddenly as it had come. The medical team’s casual chattering returned. My husband was back, holding my hand.

“Better, thank you.” The whole moment had come and gone before I could even be frightened.

“Great!” said the anesthesiologist. “You lost a bit more blood than we would have liked, but you’re good to go.”

I’m not sure why that statement didn’t concern me. Maybe because the possible danger had already passed, or maybe because I was too excited about the birth. Either way, I was unfazed.

Not long afterward, the OB’s voice carried over the curtain.

“Get your camera ready, Daddy, Baby A is coming!”

My husband rose, phone in hand. We wanted him to announce the sexes of the babes, but we hadn’t really planned on taking pictures of the birth. Hubby wasn’t certain he could stomach the sight of his wife’s abdomen pried open. Now that we have them, though, I’m so glad the OB pushed us to it. It’s weird, but I cherish these creepy snapshots more than I ever thought I would.

“Boy!” my husband cried. “We have a son!”

A wasn't quite ready for his debut.

The phrase seemed to echo in a silence that shouldn’t have been. For a moment, I worried. Where was the all-important first cry? I knew if something were wrong, the medical team would have been acting differently, but the silence was still alarming to me.

After an eternal moment, it came; a small, shivering wail like the cry of a baby bird of prey. My son, the breach babe who resided in the stage-right hemisphere of my uterus, whose little head so often poked out from just below my ribs, had crossed into this realm.

A nurse crossed the curtain with a tiny, pale bundle in her arms. She shoved him—literally—in my face.

“Say hello to your baby boy!” she demanded, smushing the babe against my cheek. I complied, trying not to laugh at being practically forced to kiss my baby for the first time.

Less than a minute later, my husband rose again, poised and ready. My daughter, the ever-mobile kicker who seemed to have a vendetta against my left lung in utero, came into this world screaming so loudly she took the medical team aback and nearly deafened me to her father’s announcement of her sex.

“It’s a girl, babe! We have a boy and a girl!”

The emotion that hit me was far more subdued than I had expected. There was no overwhelming joy or movement to tears. I felt…peaceful. I was calm and tranquil, and a little smug because I was totally right in my predictions of their sexes.

Hubby went to look at the babes as the medical team went to work delivering the placentas and stitching me back together. I would later see pictures of their first moments, naked and slimy and writhing on towel-draped scales. My son, A, was pale as ash with bloodred lips. His slender frame was still curled up in the fetal position, bowed little legs tucked to his chest. My daughter, M, was plump and red and pissed off. A was 5 lb, 13oz, and M clocked in at 6 lb, 4oz. They were excellent sizes for twins; had they been carried for 40 weeks like a singleton pregnancy, they both would have likely been right within the window of average weight. I felt strangely vindicated by how big they were. Apparently a part of me had held onto the idea that I was weak for having such a hard time with the pregnancy. But when I looked at them, all I could think was, Jesus Christ, no wonder I was in so much pain.

Now that I was back in one piece, it was time to take me out of the OR. They lifted me off the operating table and onto a rolling bed, covered me with blankets, and placed my twin newborns on my bare chest.

To the shock of all, my minutes-old son lifted his head completely off my chest and locked eyes with me.

            Not everyone feels bonded to their new baby right away. The idea that you feel instant, eternal love for your little stranger isn’t universal.

            But for me, holy fuck, the feels hit me like a freight train.

            When A lifted his head like no newborn has any business doing and stared at me, I gaped back as my heart erupted in my chest. In an instant, I loved my son and daughter more than I have ever loved anything, on a level so beyond any emotion I had ever felt before. If my hands hadn’t already been shaking from the drugs, I would have trembled with sheer force of emotion. As my babes nuzzled into my chest, sluggishly wriggling their new bodies, searching for food, I whispered a promise to them that came from me reading the entire A Song of Ice and Fire series while couch-bound and pregnant.

            “Those who would harm you will die screaming.”

            I know, not the most warm and fuzzy of first promises, but hey, their Mama’s cut from a different cloth.

            I could go on about the postpartum experience; all the horrors of immediate post-surgery, stumbling through the first nights in the hospital, the onslaught of nurses with contradictory opinions, the confusion and terror of suddenly being responsible for two new humans—and wholly trusted to take care of said humans even though you are in no way qualified—but I’ll save that for another post. This one is long enough.

            There you have it, kids. I finally, finally, finally finished my twins’ freaking birth story. Though this blog isn’t going to become a Mommy Blog, be prepared for an onslaught of posts about parenting, since that’s kind of all that’ll be happening in my life for the next few months. I promise I’ll get back to other topics soon enough. For now, let me ride this wave.

            Cheers, my dears.

*With twins, when Baby A is in any position other than head down, it is rare to find an OB who will deliver them vaginally due to increased risks of complications.