birthstory

Birth Story

I want to tell the whole story of the birth which will include all the events in the day or two leading up to the big event. I'm sure this will end up being quite lengthy, but I don't want to leave anything out.

How it all got started (December 21, 2001)

I woke up in the morning not feeling so good. I felt kind of dizzy so I was moving pretty slowly and trying to take it easy. Around 10:00am I was walking down the hallway when I got a dizzy spell and fell down. I didn't really hurt anything, although I must admit it sure didn't feel good to hit the full force with 2 full term babies sharing my body---ouch. I phoned my OB to see what I should do as I didn't think dizziness to the point of falling down was anything to mess with. He brushed me off telling me to just lay down on the couch for the rest of the day and if my dizziness continued until the next day, to phone up to the maternity ward and see what they suggested I do. I was very angry with him as I was 38 weeks pregnant with twins, experiencing high blood pressure, dizzy spells, etc and he still wouldn't do anything about it. I asked him if there was any reason for him NOT to induce me at this point and he told me he had been up to the maternity ward already that day and it was so busy that there would be no nursing staff to adequately take care of me and that would of course be a bad situation for someone laboring with twins.
So I went to get some rest on the couch. I stayed there for about 2 hours when I started seeing spots. I've read enough on pregnancy to understand that this was something that needed attention now, and not just some rest, so I phoned up to the maternity ward. They told me to come up for another NST and that it was my doctor's call whether to induce or not. I phoned my OBs office to let him know what was going on. He told me again it wasn't really necessary to go get an NST done and I could wait till morning if I wanted. At this point I pretty much just figured he was out of his mind and I followed the suggestion of the maternity ward nurse and went there. I had to call Jason home from work to take me there so it took a little while to get there.
At this point it was about 4:00pm. The NST showed both babies to be doing just fine, but my blood pressure was still up quite high. I was still seeing spots and just generally feeling weak. The nurses told me that it was definitely time for these babies to come and that they would phone my doctor to see if they could get me admitted and induced. A while later my nurse came back in the room to tell me that she couldn't get in touch with my doctor because he wasn't working on the weekend (it was about 30 minutes after his office closed), so she had to call his partner Dr. Young to see what to do. He said to admit me to the hospital to keep an eye on my blood pressure and he would see me in the morning. Ugh, no one wanted to do anything!!!!
So Jason went home to get a suitcase for me and to get us some supper (the meatloaf the hospital served for supper wasn't very appetizing!). Then he kept me company for the rest of the evening. I was quite emotional that night because I was still dizzy, seeing spots, was uncomfortable because of being extremely pregnant, and I felt as though no one was going to help me. Jason left the hospital around 10:30pm so he could get a good nights sleep and hopefully I would get some sleep as well. The nurse gave me a sleeping pill around 11:00pm and so I relaxed in my bed waiting for sleep to take over. That never happened.
Is it really happening?
I started to have mild contractions at about 11:30pm. They were about every 10 minutes apart and although they weren't really painful, they were much stronger than all of those braxton hicks contractions I'd been having for the last 5-6 months. I didn't want to get my hopes up that I was going into labor on my own, so I was still trying to just relax and fall asleep and hopefully wake up with stronger contractions. Of course I couldn't get to sleep and my nurse came in to my room around 12:30am and I told her I was contracting. The contractions were coming every 5 minutes and although they weren't extremely painful, they were strong enough that I had to breathe through them. A little later I phoned Jason asking him to come back to the hospital. It took him a little while to get there, as we also had to phone my mom and wake her up to go stay with the kids and we live 30 minutes away from the hospital. At 2:00am Jason got to the hospital and the nurses were monitoring my contractions. They were now coming every 2-3 minutes and were fairly regular. The nurse was trying everything to get me to take Demerol, but I didn't want any. I had taken it before and I hated it and swore I would never take it again. I had to tell the nurse 6-7 times that I refused to take it before she left me alone.
They took some blood from me (I'm not really sure what for) and my nurse discovered that I was quite dehydrated. I have no idea how I could have been dehydrated as I had spent my whole night drinking jug after jug of water, but I was. So they started an IV to keep my fluids up. Shortly after my contractions came to a complete stop. Everyone was disappointed. I was upset because I thought I was going to have the babies after all this time, and because I had called Jason in to the hospital disturbing his sleep and it was false labor. The nurses brought Jason a big mat to sleep on and got us settled in to get some sleep. It was about 4:00am when we finally fell asleep.

38 Weeks pregnant