The day before life changed forever.

Tomorrow is September 6.  One year ago today, I was heading into the hospital with a giant 37 week 6 day twin belly, ready to meet my boys.  I remember thinking that I liked the birth date my boys would have.  9.6.11 has a nice ring to it.  September 6, 2011.  One of the scariest, happiest, most exhausting and emotional days of my life.  It’s the day that, after about 8 hours of labor, I brought 2 of the most beautiful boys I’ve ever laid eyes on into this world.  Even though I wrote a pretty wordy post on it last year, words cannot express the flood of emotions that I experienced on that day. 

 

I was just plain nervous to deliver those boys.  I was out of my comfort zone, far away from the place I considered home, away from the nurses and doctors that I’d grown to know and trust over nearly 6 years of working in L&D.  Sure I trusted my doctor, but I was still scared.  Because even though I’d seen plenty of beautiful, perfect twin vaginal deliveries, I’d seen some not so perfect ones too.  In fact, I’d seen some pretty heart-pounding ones.  The kind that used to get my adrenaline flowing – truthfully, the kind of emergency that I sometimes craved, because I knew that we were a great team and that we’d achieve our goal of getting healthy babies and a healthy mom. 

But to be on the other side of things, is not enjoyable for me.  I’m way too much of a control freak.  I’m too cognoscente of trying to be a good patient while trying not to micromanage my labor and let the nurses and docs do their job. 

Some points of my labor are a bit of a blur to me.  Others I remember very vividly, but with a bit of an out of body experience element to them.  But I remember trying to just focus on the experience.  How many women get to experience giving birth to 2 children in one day?  Not many.  So I was determined to make it a memorable experience. 

I’ll never forget the mix of joy and worry that came over me when Beckett was born.  I was thrilled that one of my boys was out safely…and shocked at the size of him.  But I also couldn’t focus entirely on him because I was worried about Kiernan.  It’s in those few moments right after Baby A comes out that Baby B’s future can be determined.   I kissed Beckett and marveled at his sweet face and then asked the nurse to take him to the NICU team.  I could not focus on him with my other precious boy, who had already proven to be the ornery trouble maker of the 2, was still tucked inside my belly. 

I was relieved to hear his strong heartbeat and to hear my OB tell me that he had stayed head down.  But over the next 20 minutes, as he refused to come down any further and I heard his heart rate dropping with each contraction, I grew more and more nervous.  I knew his placenta was abrupting.  I’ll never forget the look in my doc’s eyes when he told me that the baby’s head was still a bit high, but he felt that the risk of breaking his bag of water was worth it.  He knew I would agree.  It only took a head nod from me and he broke the bag and told me to push like hell. 

I can honestly say that I’ve never worked so hard at something in my entire life.  And the feeling of sweet relief when that boy came out, a little blue, but trying hard to cry, was incredible.  We had our boys.  Safely brought into this world to love and enjoy. 

That day marked the beginning of quite an adventure.  This past year has been one of the hardest years of my life, but It’s also been one of the best.  It’s crazy how easily those 2 feelings can mesh together so naturally.  But they do. It’s no doubt the feelings of fear, happiness, exhaustion and emotion that started out this whole journey continued on different levels throughout the past year.  But it was all worth it.  I am so thankful to have been blessed with these sweet boys and consider myself lucky to be able to call myself their Mommy.