Monday, January 16, 2012

Our long journey to meeting Janie & Sophie




At 3 weeks and 2 days I knew I was pregnant. I took a test and quickly popped up a positive. I called my doctor as 5 months before I had had a miscarriage. I went in and had the pregnancy confirmed.
 
I had my 1st drs appt on March 30th, I was 7 wks and 6 days.
I swear I am already showing at this point. First we do the Ultrasound and the technician wants to try to do one on my belly at first. She starts it up and gets it all going, looks around for a couple of minutes and says that things are still a little small. So she sends me to the bathroom & tells me to take off my clothes. She leaves. I come back to the room and get on the chair/bed thing. and we wait for about 5 or 10 minutes. I am convinced at this point that I have had another miscarriage, though I do not mention it to my husband. She comes back and she asks if this is our last or if we are gonna try to round it off? (While she is getting everything ready to do a vaginal ultrasound) I say we are definately done, no more for me. And she says, I ask because I see 2 of them in here.. We are slightly shocked.. But very happy. I had an inckling that I might have twins & Stephen had apparently joked at work that my pregnancy test was positive so quickly & early it must be twins.. She did say that they would be identical, they were in the same sac, sharing everything. We would either have 2 girls or 2 boys. We are only the 2nd case of this particular twin to come into the office, it is very rare. There are many different types of twins our particular case is Monochoriotic Monoamniotic Twins. I ask for her to write down the whole name. She did, but asked me if I was the type to go home & google?? And yes, I am, lol. So she asked that I not go on there and read all the bad stuff, that isn't totally correct alot of the times… Well, I headed straight home, did all kinds of googling and eventually found my saving grace:
www.monoamniotic.org

At my next appt on April 29th, my dr was out on maternity leave, so I saw another dr in the practice. The dr was not able to tell me anything that I didn't already know. Said to lay out a plan is a good idea.If the babies were born early & Sparks couldn't handle their care they would be going to Children's Hospital in Little Rock. Depending on the situation, I could give birth there as well. Just depends how it all goes.. I honestly left that appt feeling like I knew less, then before I went in there. At this point I knew I only had God to rely on and I held onto that as tightly as I could!!

 
At the next couple of appts, basically the dr is promising me whatever I want. She had no expectations of the babies surviving, as the other case that came thru this office hadn’t survived. I was so very tired. And I was so nauseated, all the time. I had the worst smell adversions, I could hardly cook anything… My mom and dad hired a babysitter to come in and care for my 2 older children. 

 
17 week & 6 day appt - June 9th
I had been having feeling at night of needing to go pee, very very badly, but when I would go I would push like I was having a bm to go pee & I would barely get any out. (I am getting up 2 - 3 other times a night to go potty with no difficulty) The dr said I was having contractions. And for me to be ready at any time for her to tell me to stop doing stuff, because at one of my appt she will tell me that. I see a perinatologist at my appt on the 15th, I am to call her after that appt to tell her how it went. I start going to see them every other week from here on out. I asked her when we would start the fetal monitoring & she said around the 24th week or so, I will probaby go in every day in the week.
#7 We talked about the hopitalization again, I told her how open I was too that - whatever I have to do I will do with NO hesitation. She said she was glad to know how serious I was and she now knows I understand how serious this pregnancy is. That was a relief to her & she won't hesitate at all when telling me what's best for me to do. We found out we are having girls!!

June 23rd, 20 weeks we were told to stop having relations.
At the next few appts the dr is wishy washy. She isn’t wanting to do what we had agreed on. She is trying to treat it as a regular twin pregnancy and I am pushing for more. She’s even telling me we will try for a natural birth. She is supposed to contact the local children’s hospital and get their recommendations. Took a good month for her to finally do that. At this point, I read another blog, written my momo parents and lived by this quote until the end of the pregnancy! "I have NOTHING to complain about. I HAVE TWINS! I've always wanted twins. God is growing me up. God is strengthening our marriage. This is an adventure. Complaints would just be a waste of time. Worry would just be an insult to God. I am living life in the here and now, and excited about where God is taking me."
July 24th, 24 weeks we find out I am being transferred to the children’s hospital, that is 3 hours from home.
At 25 weeks and 3 days I have a level 2 ultrasound. They estimate the babies are 2 lbs a piece and rave about how the girls are beating expectations. They said this was the best momo pregnancy they had ever seen. Man, I was feeling good that day J
August 4th - 26 weeks we have the 1st appt @ the children’s hospital. This was the best appt I had had up to this point. Because these drs had looked over my charts, did their research and knew what they were talking about!! I saw the head specialist and a plan was laid out. I was to go home this week, come back week 27 they’d check us out- send me home and then week 28 they'll put me in the hospital. I'll stay in the hospital for a whole week, with monitoring to figure out the girls schedules & such. Then the hospital has a plan in place with a hotel down the road, they call it Camp. So they shuttle you between a hotel and the hospital, they’re about 5 min apart. They give you food vouchers to eat with. I am ecstatic as this is close enough to the plan I was wanting. We leave happy.

I went to Little Rock for my week 27 appt, I had some contractions, they check me & I am dialated to 1. They monitor the girls, things seemed fine (once they found them) They decide to keep me in Little Rock that week, August 12th. I had a small bag, just in case, but I hadn't thought to take my phone charger or much else, other than a change of clothes & tooth brush. I spent about a week in the hospital. 2 days into the hospital stay, my dad passes away, I get to go home for the weekend and I come back on Monday. I stay a few more days in the hospital. They monitor me & the girls every 3 hours. There were times that the girls were extremely hard to find, it would take forever for the nurses to find the 2 girls' heartbeats. There were times that a nurse would give in & hold the "monitor" in place. In these instances, most of the time, I had to be monitored between 30 min to an hour, there were times I was even monitored for 2 hours
At 28 weeks they sent me to "camp" . I would eat breakfast at the hotel, lunch & dinner would be sent from a deli nearby. The hotel shuttle would take me to my appt every other day. (Monday, Wednesday & Friday) I monitored myself at the hotel, every 3 hours & once a day I had a nurse call me & check in, answer questions, take notes, ect. There were times I couldn't find their heartbeats & I would have the shuttle take me to labor & delivery (happened mostly around midnight for some reason) and I would be monitored for about 3 hours. These monitorings were the worst. At that time of night the nurses weren't the best, they couldn't find the 2 heartbeats, couldn't keep them on the machine, we would end up doing ultrasounds just about every time I went. And I was just exhausted & mostly I could monitor better than the nurses, so it was hard for me to sit back & let them do their job, lol. It didn’t help at this point that I was only getting to see my family on the weekends, such trying times. At each of these appts there was a certain dr that I always ended up seeing. He felt the need to constantly remind me that they girls could pass away at any moment. Just because we were doing all these monitoring did not mean that the next time I came in they would be alive.. What a great way to end each drs appt.

At 31 weeks and 2 days, they think they see a knot, a loose knot, but a knot just the same. They monitor, the heartbeats are slightly irregular, it is decided to try to make it to 32 weeks, if we do, then we’ll be having a c-section the following Monday. We make it to week 32. I made a few midnight labor & delivery visits, but nothing major. 1 month after my dad passed away the girls were born. There were at least 25 people with us in the delivery room. Not many momo’s had made it to the point we had, here. So we were a big deal and they had quite a few student drs in the room with us. They were born with NO knots in their cords!! 


 
Janie Antoinette was born @ 12:43 - 4 lbs 4 ozs 16 1/8 inches long
She was born with club foot. She was breach with her legs crossed, explaining why she had club foot, it wasn't hereditary. Also explaining why I didn't feel her move much.
No other health issues, she was the healthier of the two. She had a feeding tube for a little while, She was on oxygen for 2 days. Janie had a lot of issue’s with juandice, we did the billy light on & off for all 3 weeks for hospitalization.


 
Sophie Rose was born @ 12:44 - 4 lbs 13 ozs 17 inches long
She was born with 2 heart murmers. 1 was one that should grow up on it's own and the other 1 she'll have her whole life, but a large part of the population has and never knows it. It is no big deal. She as well was on a feeding tube for a little while. She was on oxygen as soon as she was born, as she sucked in some amniotic fluid during the csection. She did that for about 1 week.






They took turns having ups and downs. They were in the hospital in Little Rock for 2 weeks and they transfered her to a hospital in the town we live in, she was there for 1 week. So October 10th was their 1st night @ home. :) 5 weeks before their official due date. 


No comments:

Post a Comment