The Birthday Story

As I promised, our AJ and LJ's birth story:

On Monday August 25th I woke at about 4a.m feeling weird. That's the only way I could explain it. I felt like (sorry if TMI) I had to go to the bathroom or had some awful gas pains. I kept trying to figure out what I had eaten the previous night that would have caused it. It didn't even occur to me that it could be labor beginning. I had told these two bugs it was time to come out every day for weeks -with no results. So why would today be any different?
After trying to go to the bathroom or pass some gas for quite some time I gave up and went back to bed. Couldn't sleep - the pressure in my chest and stomach hurt to much. J was sleeping on the sofa downstairs, as he typically has done since about the 4-month mark of this pregnancy (when my snoring became too much for him) so I turned on the television for a while.
4:30am - went to try to use the bathroom again. Noticed some slight pink spotting on the tp when I wiped. Hum. I guess that could be normal at this point. Maybe I'll call the OB when the office opens at 9am.
5am - one more trip to the bathroom and....well this seems like an awful lot of fluid for me to just be peeing. My water had broken. I found a big bath towel and tried my best to work my way downstairs to tell J. he was pretty calm and I told him that I wanted to call the OB on call to see what to do.
5:45am - called the on call OB, explained what had happened and that we were scheduled to have a c-section later that week. He told me we should head for the hospital then and he'd see us when we got there. I told J to put the suitcase in the car, while I went to go and shower. I don't know why I thought I needed to shower first but I was NOT going to the hospital without one so that's what I did.
8am - arrived at the hospital. Sent to triage where they checked me three times to be sure it was amniotic fluid that was leaking. Hooked up to fetal monitors and told to wait and see what happens.

Between 8am-10am the OB and nurses decided I was not really in active labor yet. Not even slightly dilated or effaced. There were two other scheduled c-sections that day so it looked like I would be waiting until after they were done with those. Luckily my contractions that I was feeling were pretty minor. By late morning they seemed to be getting slightly worse. I can not even imagine what you ladies who delivered naturally must have been through - my minor contractions were kicking my as*!

We ended up sitting in triage for about 6 hours (all the while leaking the amniotic fluid) before they finally took us into the OR for the c-section.
I was scared of the spinal but ready to have my bugs! It really wasn't so bad either. I bit nerve wracking when I heard behind me that the resident was doing it instead of the anesthesiologist (we delivered at a teaching hospital) and considering that I have panic attacks when I get a Novocaine shot at the dentist due to lack of control over my body.
It took what seemed to be a matter of minutes and they were taking Baby A out first (with the OB shocked that he was the littler one weighing in at 5lbs 10 ozs) and then Baby B was out, who weighed 6lbs 8ozs. Not bad for a 5ft2in girl like me.
J watched as the NICU doctors examined them and then left the room because they were both, thankfully, healthy and well.

Once in the recovery room, and the spinal wearing off so I wasn't afraid of dropping them, I finally got to hold my two beautiful bugs. They were everything I ever dreamed they would be. Tiny, perfect, beautiful little beings.
Finally J and I could start the next leg of our journey.