*Mason and Geneva's Birth Story* ~may be slightly graphic~

Some of this you may have heard or read about already but I think it's important to the whole story to include it in this part of the story. Let me say that I had been praying for a natural birth, even knowing that having a C-section was a very real possibility. I even talked about doing it completely natural with no pain meds or epidurals. During all the more painful contractions though, I had started thinking this wouldn't be possible because I couldn't see an end in sight and I wasn't sure how long I could do that without any "help"!

Geneva - 11/24/11

Mason - 11/24/11

I came home from the hospital after 7 weeks on bedrest, Mon, November 7th. I was home for 6 uneventful days, till the evening of Sunday, November 13th. At 31 weeks along and around 8:25pm, contractions just started up out of the blue and they were 5 minutes apart and intense. I timed them for 25 minutes and when I'd had 5 in that time, I called the doctor. He told me to go right to our local Labor and Delivery, which I did, they hooked me up to the Contraction monitor and heartrate monitors for the babies (who were both sounding fabulous) and started me on Magnesium Sulfate right away to stop the contractions, but that didn't help a lot and the contractions were getting quite painful, so they gave me Fentanyl. That didn't work and just made me a little drowsy, so they gave me a double dose of Stadol so I could get through the ambulance ride to transfer me to the big hospital with the NICU an hour away. Funny thing is, it made me hallucinate (LOL, I was seeing all the nurses, Dewayne, my Dr. and the EMT's as cardboard people) but it didn't take away the pain of the contractions. I rode in the ambulance and Dewayne drove home to grab some things for me and met me at the hospital.  Once I arrived at the big hospital a little after midnight on Monday, November 14th, there were 2 doctors, 1 nurse and a myriad of machines and monitors waiting for me. Since I was still contracting and they were getting even more painful, my nurse helped me with breathing through them. They upped the Magnesium Sulfate and gave me a 3rd steriod injection (I got the series of 2 the first time I was admitted to the hospital) for the babies lungs. After an ultrasound by the perinatologist to check babies positions, estimate their weights and check my cervical length, the OB doctor on call did a vaginal exam and found softening but no dilation. Contractions petered out around 3:30am and we were able to sleep for awhile. Dewayne left at 6am to head home and sleep a little before he went into work for a bit. Later that day, they moved me out of Labor and Delivery back to the Prenatal Unit, because labor wasn't eminient anymore. I had an uneventful afternoon Monday and the next day, everything was nice and calm! Until around 9pm when I started having contractions again, that is!! They were more intense and painful but they were kind of sporadic and weren't showing up when the nurses did my monitoring that evening and I thought that they weren't too bad, so they just told me to keep track of them. I called them again around 11 and they told me they'd be in to check on me at midnight and I was still contracting. So back on the monitor I went. The contractions still weren't showing up and didn't seem to be getting worse or closer together, so the nurses gave me an Ambien and I slept for a solid 2 1/2 hours. Contractions woke me up around 2:30am and I waited till 3:30 to call my nurses again. They came in and put me back on the monitor (and also listened to the babies heart beats for 5 minutes.) Babies were doing great, tolerating the contractions well. By that time, the contractions were starting to get closer together and more painful again. So they called the on call Dr. and he had them put me on the Magnesium Sulfate again and my IV site started swelling so they had to switch the IV site to the other arm. By now it's around 5:30am and contractions are showing no signs of stopping. I'd been using the bathroom every hour through out the night and the pressure down there was pretty intense. I still didn't think a whole lot was going on....I thought I was just "having contractions" again and that they would stop. I asked one of the nurses call Dewayne to tell him I was having contractions and we'd call if anything really started happening. Remember, we live an hour away from the hospital. It's about 6 now and things are starting to look like they may keep going and the Mag isn't stopping the contractions. Nurses are going in and out of my room at a regular rate. All of this time, I haven't asked for pain meds or even thought that I was going into labor. I am now at 31 weeks and 3 days. At 6:27am, all of the sudden, I felt the need to PUSH and that my water might have broken....I told my nurse frantically that I did and that she needed to call Dewayne NOW!!! Then I got strict orders to puff and not to push.....I still had my cerclage in (the stitch to keep my cervix closed) and if the babies were born with that in, my cervix could be ripped badly. My nurse checked me and felt Mason's head was right there. The next thing I knew, I was being wheeled out of my room on my bed as fast as they could down to the OR, next to the NICU. All the while, when I'd get a contraction, I'd be puffing instead of pushing and then my body would just take over and start to push. This happened three times total, while "flying" through the halls of the hospital and just as I was wheeled into the OR at 6:36am, my body took over and bore down hard and Mason popped out of me onto the bed behind me under the covers. I told the nurses (the dr. wasn't there yet.) "I had a baby, he came out, he was born!" and the OR nurse pulled up the blanket and there he was, crying! She clamped and cut his cord. Then she passed him through the window to the nurse waiting in the NICU. They then transferred me to the OR table and got my feet up in stirrups. The on call Dr. for the Prenatal Unit still hadn't arrived so they called a Dr. who was in the on call room next door to the OR (as it turns out, he was my Dr. for my whole pg with Brighton but didn't deliver him, he was off the weekend Brighton was born) and he came in just after Mason was born. He slowly broke Geneva's bag of waters and helped her ease down into the birth canal. Then he told me to gently push and out popped my little girl at 6:49am. He held her up so I could see her and then clamped and cut her cord and she was passed through the window to the nurse in the NICU. The rest was easy, placentas came right out with one more push, I was then put on a pictocin drip to help minimize bleeding and shrink my uterus, sedated and given local anaesthetic, so they could check my cervix for tearing (and repair it if it was necessary) from the cerclage (which Mason popped) and stitch up the first degree tear in my perineum. My cervix had no damage at all and they were able to just take the popped cerclage out. :o) Whew!! The nurse popped her head through the window periodically to give me updates on the babies and the NICU dr. came in later to tell me the babies were doing great and breathing on their own. Mason weighed 3lbs 14oz and was 16 1/2 inches long and Geneva weighed 3lbs 11oz and was 17 inches long. They are in the NICU and will most likely be able to come home before the New Year. They both got their IV's out and they both no longer need the hi-flow air and oxygen tubes in their noses. They are being tube-fed over an ounce of my pumped milk every 3 hours now and we are doing "non-nutritive" sucking so they can "practice" for breastfeeding!! They also get caffeine to help with keeping their breathing steady. I'm so proud of my babies and love them so very much. Brighton is excited his baby brother and baby sister are born but won't be able to meet them till they come home from the NICU! He does get to see pictures though. It was an amazing labor and delivery, considering I only KNEW I was in labor 22 minutes before it was all over!! Now I'd say my active labor was around 3 hours long! :o) I GOT my COMPLETELY natural birth! I am so thankful that my prayers were answered. The doctors and nurses (My nurses were phenomenal. I just LOVE them all, they are amazing and caring women!) took such good care of me while I was there for the first time - 7 weeks - then the second time - 2 days - and now the doctors and nurses in the NICU are taking good care of my babies. Praise the Lord!! God is so Good.....all the time! :o) A couple of my nurses told me that God allowed me to go into labor without me realizing it because if we had "known" sooner, I would have ended up with a C-section because that is what a few of the regular on call doctors prefer! AND I would have told my nurses sooner that I was in labor if I had realized it. I always told them when I felt off or if anything out of the ordinary happened!!