Grape Soda Club Adventures: September 2016

Sadie Mae and Benson Oliver - taken in the hospital

There are so many things that happened after the last post. There were so many other concerns that happened and Dr. Tam Tam was so sure that so many things were wrong. I was in a constant panic about it all. He made me do NSTs 2x a week and BPP ultrasounds every week as well. Then it turned into 2 BPPs a week. He was just a really intense doctor! Anyways... that's the VERY short version from weeks 30-36 lol. So let's fast forward to the good stuff :)

Wednesday September 7th I saw Tam Tam and he was amazed that I was still pregnant. I was 36wks and 3 days. He just kept saying "It is so rare to make it this far with twins!" Um... I made it to 37+1 with Alton and Ashlyn.... it's not THAT rare. I was scheduled to deliver on September 15th and Dr. T wanted to move that up to the 11th... I told him I would talk to Dr. D about it the next day. I trust her a heck of a lot more than him!!

Thursday September 8th was a crazy day. We had a meeting at Alton's school to discuss him moving from his PPCD class to their Pre-K program at 8:15am. Then I had a dentist appointment at 10:30 then I had to be at the hospital for 2pm for my NST and then I had an appointment with Dr. D at 3pm. There was just so much to do before the new twins came! So between dentist and doctor appointments I decided that I would clean the downstairs of the house and then when I got back from Dr D I planned on mopping and getting other things done.

I went in for my NST and all was fine. A NST is a "non stress test". They hook you up to monitors like they would if you were in labor at the hospital to monitor baby heartbeats. Nothing weird. They also look at my blood pressure too. Basically, you just sit on a bed with monitors on your belly and arm and then.. you just wait about 40mins. All looked great. My blood pressure was normal. I told the nurses that this was probably my last NST before I had the babies.

Then I headed down to the first floor to see Dr. D. Abbey (my fav nurse at the office) did my vitals (urine, weight and blood pressure). My blood pressure registered high. 135/90... then we waited 5mins and took it again. Still high. 135/91. So weird. I had JUST been hooked up to a blood pressure cuff for like an hour and it was totally fine!! Then I waited for Dr. D to come in the room. When she did she talked about my blood pressure being high and that the also found a trace of protein in my urine. All these things can lead to preeclampsia which would be cause for an early delivery. Yikes. She then said that I should get a flu shot and that she wanted me to go back up to triage to be monitored again for a few hours and they wanted to run blood tests and a better urine test to be safe. So back I went. The nurses were all like "what are you doing back??" So I had to pee in a cup, get blood work done and back to sitting with monitors I went. I called Jon to tell him. He was working from home at the time and Alton and Ashlyn were napping. I called my friend Kelli to see if the kids could go to her house for the afternoon so Jon could come to the hospital just in case. I was there for about 2 hours. My blood pressure? Fine. Urine? Fine. BUT! My platelets were a little low when they did my blood work. What did this mean? A golden ticket to a night stay in a luxury suite in the hospital. Awesome.

Thursday night I spent in the hospital. I just kept thinking- I left all my cleaning supplies out and I still have so much I wanted to do! Everything they monitored in the hospital was fine. The nurses even said so. I even had to do another pee in the jug thing for 12 hours. At 3:30am the nurses came and got my urine sample to be sent to the lab. At 5:45am a nurse came in and said that all my labs came back good and fine and she didn't think I'd have to stay much longer. We were just waiting for Dr. D at that time. At around 8am Dr. D came in and said there was 1 BP reading that was high during the night. None of the nurses said that. Then I mentioned that I had a really small headache. Ah... so what did this all mean? BABIES! That's what!! They wanted to deliver me at 10am. Here it is 8am... I'll paint a picture for what is going on at my house at 8am on a Friday morning...

Kids are finishing breakfast. Alton goes outside at 8:10am to get on the bus and Ashlyn has to be to school at 9am and we leave at 8:45 to get her there. Not a big deal... until we have to figure out who will pick them up and keep them for the day after school. Poor Jon. He had to run around like a crazy person. He had to go to Alton's school to give them Beth and Zak's info so the bus would let them pick Alton up. Then he had to let Ashlyn's school know that she'd be picked up by B+Z. He had to bring over car seats to B+Z's house, had to finish packing a hospital bag... and make it to the hospital before 10am lol. It can take 30mins to get to the hospital from our house- sometimes longer depending on traffic.

Right after Jon found out we were having the babies he changed his shirt and took this when he was waiting for Alton's bus

Meanwhile, I'm at the hospital getting blood taken, getting an IV, getting prepped for surgery... at 9:50am I was ready to go... but Jon still wasn't there. At 10:05am he finally arrived! He got his special blue jumpsuit and then we were taken to the OR. Jon was taken to a side room and I was in the OR getting ready. One of the nurses was one of my triage/NST nurses. I was so thankful to have her there. I was terrified. So many worries about the babies, about getting a spinal and being on blood thinners. I may have shed some tears. The spinal went fine and I had a really nice anesthesiologist too. They put a bear hugger on me to help keep me warm and keep the weird shaking down.

Jon came in after the sheet went up. I remember telling him how worried I was that the babies would have to go to the NICU or how I was scared that they weren't going to cry. I started to feel nauseous and we were able to tell the anesthesiologist quick enough so that she could give me something to stop that. I was so thankful. That was the last thing I wanted to deal with. There was lots of tugging and pulling like last time. It's such a crazy feeling! It's definitely not a normal thing to experience. Then we heard the doctor say "There's A and there's B". So we knew they were coming out soon.

First came our baby girl :) She let out such a soft cry- but it was a cry. They held her over the sheet and Jon and I shed some tears. She had lots of hair! Then a minute later came baby boy. He let out some cries too. I can't tell you how thankful I was. They held him over but I couldn't see him very well but I saw hair!! They asked Jon to come over to see them in the side room get weighed and measured.

Baby girl weighed 5lbs 2oz and Baby boy weighed 5lbs 6oz. Their measurements on the other hand are up for debate lol.. in the hospital they said girl was 19" and boy was 18 1/2". At their pediatrician visit yesterday they were shorter.. so.... who knows :)

Jon brought baby girl over to me while I was still being worked on. Baby boy was breathing a little fast so they had to watch him for a little bit. They brought him over and I got to see both of them and kiss them. So awesome. After they were all done working on me we went to recovery. The best part was that I got to go to recovery with Jon and the babies! Last time I was all alone! I even got to hold them! It made me so happy.

Benson on left and Sadie on right

Once I was done being monitored we headed to room 2303. We finally decided on names. Sadie Mae and Benson Oliver. We are in love! They were born at 36wks and 5 days. So close to 37 weeks!! They were still considered premature. Because of this they had to be monitored more closely. More blood sugar tests, special high calorie formula, car seat challenge.... lots of not so fun stuff.

Benson had a little fluid in his lungs that didn't come out at birth and had a bunch of spit up on the first day- but it has gotten better. Sadie didn't have any of the little struggles that Benson did and we are so grateful. We were almost positive that these two littles were going to get a ticket to the NICU and amazingly enough- neither had to spend any time there.

After all the crap (let's be real- it was total crap) that Dr. Tam Tam made me go through- these two are just perfect. Dr. Tam Tam was convinced that Benson had down syndrome and even when we saw him this past Wednesday (2 days before they were born) he made it very clear that I needed to get a blood test done in the hospital. He was like- there is a chance that he might be a beautiful baby with no problems but you need him to be tested. When we were in the OR I was all freaked out about that and I mentioned it to a nurse and she looked at me like I was nuts. "Um, no. I don't see any markers." Then we later brought it up to the pediatrician in the hospital and then again to our normal pediatrician and they all had the same reaction.

Anyways... Dr. T was also convinced that they were going to the NICU because there's no way twins could make it without going there. Then he was concerned about Sadie having a really small head. Oh, don't you worry- zika had even been brought up during earlier months because her head was measuring small. Facepalm. I was supposed to see him on Friday again... I was so excited that I didn't have to see him haha because my appointment would have been at 11am. Sorry buddy, I'll be in the OR :) I could've given them a call to cancel my appointment between when I found out we were going to deliver to when we went into the OR but I didn't :) When Dr. D came on Monday to see how we were doing we talked about everything. I felt so much better after talking to her. Relieved, really.

While we were there we had a few visitors and on Sunday Grandma and Grandpa came with Alton and Ashlyn. Alton was very cautious and really had no interest. Ashlyn was over the moon excited about being a big sister.