Thursday, September 9, 2010

Grab Life….Invert!!

Well, the day finally arrived.  That’s right, Shrek and Donkey have officially arrived! 

In the wee hours of the morning on 9/2/2010, Jayna and I checked in to the hospital for a scheduled induction.  She was officially at 36 weeks and 4 days.  The babies were measuring large, we could see breathing movements, Jayna was very miserable; it was time.  The early morning shift got us into our labor and delivery room and went through all the normal procedures.  They hooked up the fetal monitors, inserted the IV, got me a cup of coffee and made mom comfortable.  This whole process was very familiar to us as it was basically the same procedure when Cinderella arrived, except that one wasn’t planned.  I settled down in one of the uber comfortable chairs they give the dads and started to wait.  If this was anything like last time, we were going to be there a while.  It took over 14 hours for our first born to be jolted from her comfortable home.  Given the stubbornness of these two little urchins, I had no doubt it would be that long or longer.

Around 8:00 a.m. the doctor arrived to see how we were progressing.  The pitocin had started producing some contractions and we were progressing nicely.  He broke the water of Baby A and was on his merry way.  The nurses continued to monitor Jayna and everything seemed to be progressing very well.  Every time they would check her it seemed she was dilated a little more.  Her contractions were growing stronger and it became very evident we should move forward with the epidural.  Jayna is not a fan of pain.  She wanted to hold out but I pointed out that if her pain was at a 5 now, by the time the anesthesiologist arrived, she would be much worse.  Turns out that was a good call.  By the time he arrived Jayna was becoming quite unpleasant and had completely lost her sense of humor.  Naturally I was testing it just to make sure.

Epidural in, everything was immediately much better.  We were thankful that this time the epidural worked.  We had all kinds of issues when we had our daughter.  Around noon the doctor comes back and check for progress.  He says he’s going to lunch then he’ll be back.  We took that to mean we would deliver after lunch but we weren’t sure. 

Sure enough, around 12:30 the nurse checks and announces she is ready and they start gathering everything to take us to the operating room.  Because this was a multiple pregnancy, it was immediately classified as high risk.  As a result, the doctor wanted to deliver in the OR just in case something happened and we had to do a c-section.  By 1:00 we were headed to the OR.  I had my little booties, scrubs, mask and sexy hat.  We walked into the OR and OMG IT WAS COLD.  Jayna and I were both shivering.  One would expect this maybe because of nerves or fear.  Not us, we were too cold to be scared.  There are 2 or three nurses and the doctor in the room and everyone is generally calm and collected.  So far so good.

Once everyone is prepared, the doctor tells Jayna that on the next contraction we are going to push.  A minute or so later that occurs and Jayna gives a big girl scout push. 

“Ok, the head is almost out.  Please don’t push that hard the next time or I will be catching a bank shot off the wall behind me.”

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but her doctor is a real comedian.

With the next push, we are the proud parents of a 6lb 4oz baby boy.  We catch a glimpse of him as they shuttle him off to the next room, presumably to warm up.  Did I mention it was cold in there?  Things are still calm in the room and everyone is going about their job.  The doctor breaks the baby’s water and then we hear the the doctor say: “Don’t do that!  Why do they always do that?”

Baby B had slid down in the womb and was transverse or laying 90 degrees to where he should have been.  This isn’t really what we wanted to hear, but it wasn’t the end of the world.  Maybe he can turn him.  There are about 10 minutes of the doctor doing his thing trying to get the baby positioned correctly to be delivered.  He keeps mumbling about how the baby keeps grabbing his hand or that he can feel a foot.  At one point something is said about his middle finger and the nurse tells us we can tell this one that he was given the bird in utero.  The doctor told us that while we were having some difficulty he wasn’t “worried”.  I believe his exact words were: “It will take me longer to get your feet out of the stirrups that it will to get this baby out if it comes to that.”  However, just to be safe the anesthesiologists were called and on stand by.  This all carries on for a while and then the tone changed.  Apparently the babies umbilical cord had prolapsed, meaning it was trying to come out first.  This is apparently very dangerous as it can cut off the babies blood supply and oxygen. 

The doctor announced we were going ahead with the c-section and all hell broke loose.  The number of personnel in the room went from about 3 or 4 to what seemed like 100.  It was chaotic but organized all at the same time.  Another syringe of no feel um juice was pushed into Jayna’s epidural, the tent went up and everything was under way. 

Now I’m going to take a break now to talk about me.  For those of you that know me, you know that I’m not fond of hospitals, blood, surgery or any other general ooginess.  This particular situation was basically a nightmare scenario for me.  I don’t even have to see the aforementioned stuff, just thinking about it will cause me to either hurl all over everything or pass smooth out.  I was of course determined not to be THAT GUY.  But they didn’t make it easy.  As the surgery progressed, naturally there was blood.  It happened to splatter all over the floor and pedestal of the bed right below me.  Wow, it’s not hot in the room.  Like boiling hot.  I’m getting that funny feeling and I’m trying to concentrate on comforting Jayna.  It’s kind of hard to breathe.  I’m panting like a lizard and behind that surgical mask, every breath was hot and nauseating.  I had to pull it away from my face just to maintain.  As they are working to get the baby out they are tugging and pulling on Jayna causing her whole body to shake.  Again, I don’t have to see what’s going on, it’s freaking me out. 

After what seems like an eternity I hear the doctor say, he’s out.  The nurses shuffle him off into the next room and we never hear him cry.  All it takes is a look between Jayna and I to know that we are both on the same page.   No one is saying anything about how he is doing and after hearing that the cord has prolapsed, we are worried.  We focus on each other and wait for the news.  Again, another eternity passes and the nurse sticks her head in the OR and announces he is 7lbs 8oz and doing fine.  We breathe a sigh of relief and I continue to hide behind the tent and ignore the blood on the floor.  A few minutes later, they bring him in and hand him to me.  I swivel around in my chair and let Jayna see him and say hello.  The nurse says we need to go to the nursery and that I can carry him down there if I would like.  As I get up to leave the room I realize she is leading me through the OR on the OTHER side of the tent.  I felt like Dory in Finding Nemo.  Just keep walking, just keep walking, just keep walking.  Oh yeah, and don’t drop your son.  I somehow found my way out of the OR and to the nursery.  Everything is much better now.

I wait in the nursery while the put Jayna back together and have a few moments of sheer terror as I realize that not one but two of those babies are mine.  They are getting their bath, measurements, blood work etc.  There is a crowd gathering outside the window and I can see them mouthing, “Is that the twins?”  Apparently we were the only couple having twins on the floor and everyone knew about it.  About 30 minutes later the doctor comes in and tells me Jayna is doing fine.  They are going to x-ray her to make sure they didn’t leave any tools in her because they didn’t have the opportunity to count everything given the emergency nature of the c-section.  As soon as they finished that they would be taking her back to the room.  He is also in awe of the size of the babies.  He points out that he and his wife just had a baby, his wife carried their baby longer than Jayna and she still only weighed 5lbs 9oz.  Both of our twins outweighed his singleton.  The opportunities for a good ribbing were abundant at that moment but I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to produce any bazingas.

The next few days were of course a blur in the hospital.  Someone was in the room every 30 minutes to an hour for one reason or another.  It’s like one nurse pointed out, there are three patients in this room.  If we aren’t in here for Jayna, someone is in here for the babies.  We took advantage of the nursery all we could and would send the babies away in the evening so we could try to get some sleep.  Cinderella got to visit her new brothers a couple of times and I picked her up from our friends house on Saturday and we brought donuts to mom.  Jayna was ready to be home.  At that point the care they were giving her consisted mainly of taking her blood pressure and heart rate every hour and bringing her pain medication on schedule.  She asked the doctor if we could go home that morning and he gave us the blessing on the spot.  A few hours later we were headed home.  By the time they finished discharging us, Jayna’s pain medication was starting to wear off.  If you haven’t driven in Tulsa lately, let me tell you the roads are TERRIBLE.  You don’t realize it so much until every time you hit a bump your wife winces.  I gingerly make my way to the pharmacy and then home to try to get her comfortable. 

So, the time at home so far has been about what we expected.  A lot of sleepless nights and finding our routine.  We have been attempting to get the twins on some sort of a schedule and it appears to be working for the most part.  If one wakes up and is ready to eat, we wake both of them up and feed them.  This results in the diaper changes being about the same as well.  Even though there are two of them we have talked about it, and we really feel we don’t think it is as difficult as it was when we brought Cinderella home.  All of the processes are familiar, there is just a lot more to do.  The first couple of days were particularly rough because Jayna’s milk hadn’t come in yet and the babies were up every 30 minutes it seemed.  That situation has improved dramatically plus we supplemented several times to get us through it.  I remember when we had Cinderella, we agonized with supplementing Jayna’s milk, we agonized with whether or not to use a pacifier, basically we agonized with every decision we made.  Turns out, she survived.  It has been a bit questionable lately whether or not she will survive this sassy 3 year old stage but that’s another blog post.  This time it has not been nearly as difficult to make decisions about what to do and what not to do.  I guess it’s true what they say about the second child(ren). 

As of now, the babies are sleeping for 2 to 3 hours at a time and feeding well.  We went to the pediatrician on Tuesday and they had lost a bit more weight than he liked but we weren’t in any particular danger.   We are going back to the doctor tomorrow to make sure they are gaining weight but we are reasonably comfortable they are.  They are eating well and certainly expelling well.  I have changed diapers until I am sick of seeing diapers and it has only been a week.  It also doesn’t help that we have to take special care of the circumcisions every time we change a diaper.  it’s not unusual for us to get one changed and while we are changing the other, the first one pee’s his pants.  Oh yeah, and our boys don’t just pee their pants.  Oh no.  They are Houdini’s of urination.  Both of them pee up their back on a regular basis.  Jayna and I are scratching our heads trying to figure out how that happens and how to prevent it.  So far it doesn’t matter where you point it or how you fasten the diaper.  Jayna looks at me like I should know what is going on but I have to gently remind her, I don’t pee up my back, nor do I have any clue how I would go about that.

We certainly want to thank all of our friends who have sent us well wishes, brought us dinner or offered their assistance.  It is wonderful to know we have such good friends and such a strong support group.  We will keep you posted and I will get some pictures up as soon as I can.