long story, part 1

I guess you could say that labor really started about 3 weeks before the girls were born. I had an appointment and asked the doctor to check to see if I had dilated at all because I felt different. The doctor told me he was sure I was fine, but checked anyway and was really surprised to find I was 4 cm dilated and about 80% effaced. He sort of freaked out and sent me over to Labor and Delivery to make sure that I wasn't having regular contractions. At the hospital they found I was having contractions but they slowed down after a shot of meds. Just to be on the safe side, I also got a shot of steroids to help the babies lungs mature, should they decide to fall out of my uterus in the coming days. I was allowed to go home, with orders to drastically reduce my activity and "take it easy".

As awesome as bedrest sounds to some people, let me assure you, it was torture. Not because it was boring, but because it was literally painful to lay down and be still for more than 5 minutes at a time. So I did the "take it easy" route. For 2 and a half weeks, there was no change in my cervix, despite full days and nights of contractions every 3-10 minutes. After contractions non stop for no reason for that long, your muscles start to hurt and you start to get tired, and cranky... very, very cranky. By the time I was 35 weeks, I was at the end of my rope. As much as I wanted my babies to stay in and grow, I NEEDED them out and I started really believing that they were never going to come. The frustration I felt was bordering on ridiculous. I knew in my right mind that they babies would come when they were ready, but my irrational mind was convinced that they were NEVER going to come.

2 days before the babies were born I had a routine appointment and the doctor made the mistake of asking me how I was feeling. After I was done laying into him, he checked my cervix and found that I was still 4 cm but 100% effaced and I was contracting. He apparently hadn't read my chart to see that I had been this way for nearly 3 weeks, and freaked out because he thought I was in active labor. He ordered me to go to Labor and Delivery because he was sure I was going to have the babies that day and I needed a round of antibiotics before the babies were born. His eyes just about bugged out of his head when I asked him if I had time to run to the Apple Store to get my computer fixed before we went to the hospital. So we headed over to L&D, not really understanding why we were going.

When we got there, there was a lot of confusion about why we were there. I knew I wasn't in labor but he didn't and I apparently didn't convey the message to him very well. Was I going to be induced? Did he want me to get the antibiotics before I was in labor? Who knew. So we waited for the on call doc from the practice to come in and see me. And low and behold, the on call doc happened to be the baby doctor of the practice. I had only seen him once before but when I first met him I honestly had a lot of reservations about him attending the birth of my twins. I didn't know how much experience he had in doing twin deliveries and I feared that he would just go the "safe" route and scare me into a c-section so he could be in complete control of the delivery, and therefore minimizing the chance of any "surprises" happening.

The doc decided that I was much too happy to be in active labor, even though I was having contractions every 2-6 minutes, so I was to be monitored for a few hours before we decided what to do. At some point I asked him if he would do a breech delivery of Twin B, should she flip after Twin A was born. And I'm pretty sure his exact words were, "Oh HEEEEEEEEEEEEEELL to the NO!" He then informed me that he wouldn't even try to flip her back and if she went breech, he would go straight to a c-section because he was never taught how to do a breech delivery and that he wasn't comfortable with doing a version during labor. Insert the sound of my contractions coming to a screeching halt. Seriously, in that moment, my contractions went to about every 12 minutes. I very much appreciated his honesty and I was also glad to know that my gut feeling was right about his experience and get confirmation that he was not the right doctor to attend the birth of my girls.

A couple of hours later, we decided that I was not in active labor (duh) but that M and I were going to stay in the area for a few more hours just in case the contractions picked up again. As we were leaving, I told M that I was pretty sure the doc was racing home to do a cram session on twin deliveries, while stopping at the church to light a candle and say a prayer that we weren't going to show up at L&D at 2:30 in the morning.

We went to get some lunch after we left the hospital. Let me tell you, the way to get a table quickly when there’s a wait time is to tell the hostess you are actually in labor when she asks you what your due date is. Works every time. The fact that I ate lunch, which was delicious, and managed to keep it down told me that the babies were not going to be born that day. That in itself was both comforting and incredibly anticlimactic at the same time. The next 24 hours were almost blissful. The contractions were few and far between, I was able to sleep well and I actually had a little bit of energy. I guess my body knew what was going to happen in the next day…