We have Babies!

Since I wrote during labor last week it has been quite the rollercoaster for our family. And now that I finally have a minute to sit down and write there is so much to tell that I don't know where to start, so I guess I'll just start from where the last post left off. I haven't had time to deal with replacing my hard drive, so I can't post pictures, but I have been trying to capture most of this experience on my iphone and have been diligently posting to instagram (http://instagram.com/jenniferbelly), so you can check out my feed there if you want some visuals. :)

LABOR and DELIVERY
After I wrote last, they gave me my epidural and broke my water. Things continued to move along well, but my epidural didn't work...AT ALL. They kept poking me and touching me with ice to see if I was numb, and when I wasn't they tried to top off the epidural two different times...still nothing. Now during a typical labor, an epidural is a matter of comfort and pain management, but when you are laboring with twins, the risk of needing to have an emergency c-section is very high, so if you don't have a working epidural, you run the risk of having to be put completely under if anything goes wrong. So, with this in mind, and with my labor progressing pretty quickly, they finally decided to take out the epidural and try again.

So round 2 of the epidural, this time while experiencing some fairly painful contractions, and it seemed to be starting to work on one side. Sadly, it never spread past the outside half of my right leg, so when the contractions started coming stronger and closer and I was dialated to a 7, they again tried to top off the epidural and again...nothing. They decided to turn off my pitocin because the surgery staff and anesthesiologist were going to need to go into another procedure and sure enough, as soon as they turned off the pitocin, I needed to push.

So off we rolled to the operating room and I delivered Baby B first (now becoming Baby A) at 5:55 pm. He was face up and delivering him with no pain relief was certainly not a pleasant experience. If these babies hadn't been our last, they would have been after that. Little did I know, the worst was yet to come as Baby A (now becoming Baby B) flipped breech and had to be delivered by breech extraction (basically the Dr. reaches in and pulls the baby out by the legs) - again, not a very pleasant experience. I am grateful my other deliveries involved working epidurals and that our little guys were, indeed, little. I got to see the first baby for about a minute and they brought me the second baby, but shortly after they snapped a picture of Seth and I with both babies, baby #2 started turning blue, and both babies were whisked away to the NICU. Seth went with the babies (and my phone) and I was left to tell the doctors that they better not start giving me those stitches without numbing me as they were literally inches from starting. I am fairly certain they did not believe me that my epidural did not work. After a very long hour post-delivery and nurses changing shifts, Seth finally came back to update me and when the night nurse finally came in, I was able to go over to the NICU to see our babies.


NICU BABIES

Though I could walk, the NICU is in the attached children's hospital about 1/4 mile walk from my Labor and Delivery room, so Seth wheeled me over to the NICU room, and there they were...my sweet little boys on C-Paps to help them breathe, and making this little whine/cry sound in unison (a sound signifying that they are struggling to breathe). We didn't get to hold them, but got to stroke their sweet little fuzzy backs and try to decide on names for them. The kids had pretty much determined that they would be Lincoln and Ryder, and we thought Lincoln was pretty fitting for Baby #1, but with his little mask and frail little body, we just weren't sure that Ryder was a fitting name for Baby #2, so they both remained unnamed for the first day or so.

I'll never forget standing there at the sides of their little isolettes with tears falling down my cheeks feeling completely helpless and heartbroken that they had to be in there, hooked up to all the monitors and cords. I just wanted to scoop up my little babies and cuddle them and feed them and stare into their little faces while I relaxed in my hospital room like I had with all of my other kids. Eventually we headed back to my room to discuss names and one of the pediatricians came to give us the update on the babies and what they would be doing for them. We were told that Baby #1 would most likely be intubated and get serfactin and Baby #2 possibly would as well...something we were hoping to avoid. After we prayed for our little boys, Seth headed home for the night. Right after he left, I got a call from the NICU Dr. letting me know that their test results actually were better than they thought and that they wouldn't need to intubate either of the boys.

Thursday morning I went to see the babies first thing and was pleasantly surprised to find that neither of them were making the whine/cry sound anymore and they would both be weaning from the cpap over the course of the day. I wasn't able to hold them until later in the day, which was so hard as a new mommy. That afternoon, Baby #1 was moved from Cpap to a nasal canula, and Baby #2 was completely off of breathing help and breathing room air. The kids got to come and see the babies and hold Baby #2. My mom took the kids home to bed and Seth stayed at the hospital with me and the babies to decide on names (and snuggle the babies, of course).

Baby #1 (formerly Baby B) | Lincoln Seth Tate | 5 lbs 10 oz. | 18.5 inches long | Born 5/15 at 5:55 pm
Baby #2 (formerly Baby A) | Ryder Seth Tate | 5 lbs 3 oz. | 18.9 inches long | Born 5/15 at 5:59 pm


Friday morning both boys were under bili lights because they found that they have a different blood type than I do and the antibodies my body made to get rid of that blood from my body, transfers to them and attacks their blood cells causing the same reaction as jaundice. Because of this we couldn't hold either baby all day.

MY HOSPITAL STAY

I have always kind of enjoyed my hospital stay after having babies. It is a nice quiet short break from my everyday life where I get to snuggle with a newborn, have someone bring me food for every meal, and watch babies while I sleep all while recovering from delivery with pain meds and ice packs to prevent pain before it started. This hospital stay was none of that. I had to walk back and forth between the NICU and my post partum room many times a day. I always let my nurses know when I was going and when I got back to make it easier for them to do my care when I was there, but they were rarely around to check in on me and never brought me my pain meds on schedule. I had to pump milk to take to the babies since they weren't able to nurse yet. I had to share a bathroom with some other person who happened to decide to take a shower every single time I had an available minute to  shower in between pumping, trips to the NICU, and trying to sleep. Also sharing a bathroom with a random woman who has just given birth seems unsanitary and is kind of gross, not to mention that every time she went in the bathroom, she had to lock the bathroom door from my room which was super loud. And the most frustrating part of my stay was that I requested an order for a breast pump (which my insurance would purchase for me) from every single nurse and Dr. I saw and none of them followed through on actually submitting the order to my insurance company until my discharge nurse came in and found me in tears on the phone with my insurance company trying to figure out how to make it happen on Friday afternoon when they were getting ready to discharge me. If I were having any more children I can tell you where I would not be delivering them...


FEELING TORN

Since the babies were getting their feedings through an ng tube, I went home and slept in my own bed Friday night. It was so wonderful to wake up to hugs from the kids on Saturday morning. After their initial excitement that Mom was home, Morgan's first question was, "Where are the babies?" He was pretty disappointed when I told him they had to stay in the hospital. "You didn't even get to bring one of them home?" he asked. It was pretty sweet. We headed down to Einsteins for breakfast with Grandma Becky and since we were more than halfway to the hospital, we decided to take the kids to see the babies again, even though they wouldn't get to hold them since they were under the bili lights. They were a little over-excited and it was a pretty short lived visit before Grandma took them back home.

Seth and I stayed for the day and then went home for dinner. During dinner, though, I got insanely sick...achey all over, unable to sit up, shooting pains and tingling in my back and legs and swelling like crazy in my hands and feet and legs. Despite my wishes to spend time with the big kids, it was all I could do to read them stories and then go up to my bed and fall asleep. I woke up Sunday morning feeling a little better, but still quite horrible. We think that it was the epidural medicine redistributing throughout my body and causing a reaction since it had obviously not gone where it should have when they injected it (after the 2nd epidural was placed, I found out that the anesthesiologist who placed it both times was actually a resident...I wasn't very happy about that). Feeling yucky, I didn't take the time to get ready, but headed in to the hospital with my Mom to deliver milk and spend some time with the babies.

We were so surprised to see that they were off the bili lights when we got there, and even more surprised that I had the okay to start nursing Ryder. He was a nursing champ, and they decided to get me a room so I could stay and nurse him round the clock. The room was tiny...just a very small bed and a chair and a small tv and a phone on a nightstand...there wasn't even an outlet where I could plug in my phone to charge. But, it served its purpose as a place to sleep and I spent most of my time in the babies' NICU room anyway. And, while it was nice to have a place to stay and sleep and be able to nurse Ryder around the clock, it has been the most difficult part of the NICU stay.

Each moment I feel torn between being a good mom to my newborn baby(ies) or being a good mom to my big kids. Each time I think about what I am missing out on at home...the last week of school, the good morning snuggles, falling asleep next to my amazing husband and kissing him goodbye in the morning, the family dinners, swimming in the afternoon, bedtime stories, hairdos and outfits to pick out...I just get teary because I so wanted to be there for all of that. But I am only one person, and I am the only person that can feed my babies, and while this has been the hardest time of my life being away from my cute family, we knew that by staying at the hospital with the babies around the clock they would be able to come home sooner and be better off in the long run.


THE NICU ROLLERCOASTER

I had no idea when we delivered the babies and they needed help breathing how hard this NICU stay would be. It has been filled with ups and downs and a lot of tears and frustration and hopefulness. I know that Heavenly Father has been watching over us through it all and that he has been mindful of my prayers, and I know we are blessed to only be here for a short time and to know that it is just a matter of how long we are here...not whether the babies will survive, but that hasn't made it easier.

On Monday, Lincoln switched from high flow oxygen to low flow oxgen and was able to start nursing. On Tuesday, they moved me to a bigger room with my own bathroom and shower and a bed that could sleep 2 and Ryder got to "room in" with me...kind of like playing house in preparation for discharge. I took care of all his needs, but the nurses still checked his stats and did assessments and tests and such. Once he was able to room in, we were just waiting for his bili levels to start going down, so he could be discharged. Also on Tuesday, they put Lincoln on a micro-flow oxygen and slowly weaned it until they took him off oxygen completely on Wednesday morning. It was so amazing to see both of my boys without any tubes stuck to their faces, and I was filled with hope that we coulld have our whole family back together again by the end of the week.

Thursday night, though, I had my least favorite NICU nurse. She was really negative and seemed to make a big deal over every little thing and petitioned to have Lincoln back on his oxygen after he had been off it all day. So, back on oxygen Lincoln went. It was such a heartbreaking setback that caused me lots of tears. Ryder's bili levels were still all over the place...up one day and down the next...and he needed to have some good weight gain, since he had lost weight a couple of the days, but Lincoln going back on oxygen meant that again we would have to wean him from the oxygen and wait to see how he did for at least 24 hours. Luckily, in the morning, the Dr. took him back off the oxygen and he did fantastically after that. They gave me the go ahead to have both boys room in with me with the anticipation that as long as they gained weight Friday and their bili levels didn't increase, we would be discharged in the morning. Unfortunately, Lincoln lost a few grams and Ryder's bili levels jumped up. The drs felt like they could discharge us, except that we wouldn't be able to follow up on the bili levels with our pediatrician until Tuesday because of Memorial Day weekend, so they decided to keep us one more day, just to check the bilis. Both boys gained weight Saturday and we were so hopeful that we would be able to go home this morning, but Ryder's bili went up again and he needed to be back on the lights. Again, our drs said they would be happy to send us home if we could get a bili bed to take with us, but that wouldn't be possible because of the holiday weekend. So Ryder couldn't be discharged. Lincoln, however, was discharged today...though it doesn't really feel like it since he still has to stay at the hospital with me and Ryder. It is nice to know that I could take him outside with me if I wanted though. :)

So here we are on day 11 of our NICU stay, and I am so ready to have our family back together again. All of the drs and nurses want to see us go home tomorrow and are testing Ryder in the morning and again in the afternoon so that hopefully we can be discharged before tomorrow night. If not, they will send us home on Tuesday with a bili bed if he still needs the phototherapy, so the end is in sight.

We would not have survived without my Mom coming to help. Thanks Mom, for getting everyone where they needed to be, feeding, clothing, bathing, loving and entertaining my family while I have been stuck in the hospital. Thanks to the friends and neighbors who have called, stopped by, brought dinners, watched kids, carpooled, and kept us in their prayers. Thanks to my in-laws who came this weekend for watching kids so Seth could come spend time with me in the hospital...I have been missing my hubby like crazy and his visits have been keeping me sane! Thanks to the 4 beautiful children of mine who have been so good about being carted all over the place, driving back and forth the 45 minutes to and from the hospital, having their schedules turned upside down, called me, and brought me notes, and snuggled with me, and have been so excited to see me every opportunity we have had...I am so very blessed to be their Mom. This experience has certainly been a trying one, but more than ever before, I am so grateful for my family. Grateful to be the one that they rely on to run our household and care for them and stick the cupboards with their favorite foods, and get them where they need to go, and love them like crazy. I think when I finally get to be home with them again, I will appreciate the work of motherhood so much more because my heart has been heavy as I haven't been able to do those things.

Finally, anyone out there who read this whole novel of a post, these twin boys are just absolutely a joy. They are so sweet and so darling and so hard to tell apart (yikes!). I promise a post about them with pictures as soon as my new hard drive is installed. I am absolutely smitten with them!