August 12, 2018 will forever be one of the most memorable and important dates of my life.  This story begins, however, on August 11.  On Saturday, August 11, 2018, I wasn’t feeling 100%.  I was 33 weeks pregnant, had super swollen feet and ankles, and just wanted to be lazy.  I had a doctor’s appointment the day before, on Friday, August 10, and all was good.  My doctor informed me that I would need to go on bed rest the following Wednesday, when I hit 34 weeks.  So, after the appointment, I called my boss, we discussed what we needed to do with HR, and said we could chat more on Monday.  I knew I needed to do things to prepare for the arrival of the twins, but I just couldn’t make myself get up off the couch.  T had previously arranged a night out to go to a concert, and I was looking forward to just relaxing at home – take a nice, long bath, watch a movie, be asleep by 9:30 – how exciting!

After taking my bath with my favorite lavender epsom salt and watching Iron Man, I went to sleep a little after 9:00 pm.  I was super pumped for allllll of the sleep I was about to get, because being 33 weeks pregnant with twins is super hard and I was tired ALL THE TIME.  I woke up a little after 10:00 pm, and my water had broken.  I won’t go into the details of how I knew, because honestly at first, I didn’t know, but then it clicked and I thought, “Oh crap!  This isn’t supposed to happen yet.”  You can message me if you want more details on that…….Me, being pregnant for the first time, didn’t exactly know what was going on, so I called the ob on call number, and long story short, the on call doctor said to come in asap.  Because T was on the other side of Houston from where I was at, I told him to meet me at the hospital.  Disclaimer: I was not having contractions or in any sort of pain, but I knew I needed to get to the hospital as quickly as possible.  Many people have questioned why I didn’t wait for him to get home or call an ambulance, but like I said, I wasn’t in any pain at the moment and didn’t want to sit around waiting.

After getting to the hospital and Tyre getting there a few minutes after me, we made our way up to Labor and Delivery.  The nurses were super confused as to why we were there, because no one was supposed to be in that part of the hospital at that time of night – it was a little after 11 at this point.  We were speaking through the intercom and I said my water had broken and the ER nurses said to come up here, so I did.  Apparently that isn’t hospital protocol and I should have checked in through the ER and had a nurse bring me up, but they just told us to walk up to that floor, so we did.  Anyway, they got me into L&D and had me change into a robe and checked the babies’ heart beats.  After confirming that the babies were fine, they did mention that my blood pressure was high.  They called for my doctor to come see me.  Randomly, he wasn’t the on call doctor that night, but he was the ob-ed doctor (basically the doctor in charge of any ob related emergencies that come in for the night that aren’t patients of his.)  And even more randomly, they said he usually doesn’t pick up these shifts, but for some reason, he did that night.  He came right up, evaluated the situation, and basically said my blood pressure was too high and that we needed to do a c-section pretty quickly.  He stressed this wasn’t an “emergency” situation, but we needed to get it done that night.  Everything then started happening super quickly and I just kept thinking, “Ok, this is really happening, breathe, yes, it’s not how you planned, but it will all be ok, just breathe, the doctors know what they are doing, 33 weeks isn’t too too early, the babies will just be small, and so on and so on.”  Then, the nurses prepped me for the c-section and gave me a steroid shot for the twin’s lungs.

Side note – I don’t think Tyre realized what was really going on until the doctor started talking about the spinal block and how they would administer it within the hour.  He said, “What?  This is happening tonight?”  and the doctor said, “Yeah, dude, like within an hour or so!”  At that point, we called our parents and let them know the babies would be here tonight and that they should head our way.  Then they walked me into the OR (yes, I walked into the OR 🙂 ) and within minutes of administering the spinal block, Savannah made her grand debut, and a minute later, Sullivan was on the outside as well.  It was seriously that quick.  As we were walking into the OR, I was telling Tyre, “Take pictures of everything!  Everything!”  He said, “How do I know what to take pictures of? Won’t they tell me?”  And my response was, “I don’t know, but you better not miss anything!”  And he got pretty much almost everything 🙂 Because they were early, each twin had a team ready to tend them.  The isolettes were waiting outside of the OR ready to take the babies to the NICU.  Once Savannah was out, they quickly evaluated her, swaddled her up, and brought her over to me.  I was able to give her a kiss before they whisked her away.  Sullivan, on the other hand, need a little more help, and was quickly put on oxygen.  Because of this, they very quickly showed him to me, but needed to get him to the NICU asap.

Savannah Marie, or also known as twin A, was head down throughout my entire pregnancy.  She came out weighing 4 pounds and 7 ounces and was 17.5 inches long, born at 1:56 am.

Sullivan Clements, or twin B, was breech throughout my pregnancy and came out weighing 4 pounds and 13 ounces.  He was 18.5 inches long and was born at 1:57 am.

After all of this was over, I remember just laying there thinking, “I am a parent now, and my entire life is changed forever.”  Instantly, I felt like every priority I had in life up until that point was now pushed down to make room for Savannah and Sullivan, and that my sole purpose on this Earth is to take care of them and raise them to be the best humans possible.

It seemed like it took an eternity for the doctor to patch me up, but I think in reality, it was around 20-30 minutes.  I felt like I was laying there forever, and all I could think about was the babies and if they were all right.  I then had to go into a recovery room for another 30 minutes to an hour, where I was FREEZING cold.  They were prepared for this and had this big blow dryer looking thing that was blowing hot air under my blanket to warm me up.  Then, the worst.  I started itching.  It was my nose first, then my face, then my chest, arms, hands, and then as the spinal block wore off, my back, stomach, legs, feet, and eventually my entire body.  Apparently the magnesium they put me on for the high blood pressure has a horrible side effect of making you itch.  When I say it was horrible, it was horrible.  They tried giving me benadryl and some other type of anti-itch med in my IV, but nothing seemed to work.  I had to be on the magnesium for 24 hours after the delivery, so I had a long time of dealing with the itching.  Eventually I ended up back in the L&D room where I was instructed to rest and get sleep, but hello!  How can you rest and get any sleep?  My mind was going wild and all I could think about was seeing the babies.  Around 8:00 am, my nurse instructed me I needed to start pumping, because the babies really needed my colostrum.  Um, exactly how do I do that?  We had a brief lesson, and I’ve not stopped since!  I finally was able to go down to the nicu around 10:30 the next morning.  It was one of the most incredible feelings being able to hold the babies for the first time.  They were so tiny and molded to my body when I held them.  It seriously was an amazing feeling.

The twins spent 10 days in the nicu, and they were some of the longest and fastest days of my life.  I can’t really explain it, but the time flew by, but also seemed to drag.  Everyone says, “I bet that was such a stressful time for you,” but in reality, I felt somewhat at peace.  I knew my babies were in the absolute safest place possible, and because we were spending so much time with the doctors, nurses, and specialists, we developed a trusting relationship with each other.  Not only were they highly trained and extremely intelligent, but they were also comforting and personable at the same time.  The nurses really got to know Tyre and I and even started noticing little things about us, like when the swelling in my feet was staring to go down 🙂  They knew when I needed to rest and would send me back down to my room, and they loved the nightly visits from Tyre when he walk down my recently pumped milk, well, more like colostrum.  In fact, he even got to change his first poopy diaper on one of those nightly visits.

Check back within the next couple of days to see more about our stay in the nicu.  Until then, thank you for taking the time to read my story, and feel free to share your birth story in the comments below 🙂

Cheers – MP

professional photos by Haley Stage Photography