Twinnies Turn One: Their Arrival Story, Part One

I have been a mother for over eight years now.  It is one of the most rewarding and insanely challenging things I have ever done in my life.  It certainly has not even been slightly what I expected it to be.  There have been days when I wanted to pull out my hair, and just walk out the door.  But there are other days when I get the sloppiest kisses and flowers picked for me and everything else that makes it all such a joy.  When planning to become a mother, all of those years ago, I had the perfect idea of the little brood that we would create.  I had decided that we would have two little ones, both girls.  And Trav was fully onboard with this.  He even went to our first anatomy scan when pregnant with Atty, dressed entirely in pink.  We were ready for those two little girls.  But the universe had other plans.  Our first child, despite the pink support, was our Atty, the first grandson of the family.  And then came Jasper.  It seemed that my dreams of a little girl to play tea party with and dressing all of the bows and ruffles possible was slipping through my fingers.  Until August of 2020 when Trav and I decided to take the risk and try for our third, keeping all fingers and toes crossed that this would be, at long last, my baby daughter.

As I have written in this blog before, I was overwhelmed with joy to discover that we were, in fact, to have our little girl.  But the reveal of not one but two girls was more than a little daunting.  But after we spent the rest of the morning of the reveal panicking, we got ourselves ready to be twin parents. (Incidentally, we sent a picture of that first ultrasound to my sister-in-law which she, in turn, sent to her husband.  The only problem with the receipt of the twin ultrasound was she had not prefaced it with any explanation.  Adam assumed that this photo was HER ultrasound and so for a split second he thought that his wife was not only unexpectedly pregnant but that THEY would be having twins.  Our news caused several panic attacks across the family!)  I buckled down and did my best to survive the first trimester of this pregnancy.  I have always had rocky first trimesters but this last one was brutal.  I was unable to eat anything.  I lost ten pounds by the time I had regained any sort of appetite. And had to nap at least once per day.  I just held on and breathed my way through until my life became less of a misery.

14 weeks preggers

After the first trimester, my pregnancy was uneventful.  They trucked along, growing perfectly without complication.  Because I was not only a mom of multiples, but of “advance maternal age” I got to see the maternal fetal medicine specialist very regularly and saw my girls more than I saw both of the boys combined.  I got to watch them grow from the tiny gummy bears to the tiny humans they became over ten months.  Until they were very crowded within me, they were always cuddled close together with their little heads touching.  They grew perfectly and over the course of those ten months of them within me and ran into absolutely no problems.  My girls were safe and healthy, and I was so, so lucky to never worry about them. 

31 weeks preggers

Momma on the other hand, was not as comfortable.  Like many pregnancies, the second trimester was a bit of a reprieve from the unpleasantness that pregnancy holds.  But, unfortunately, the weight of carrying of two babies, started to truly affect my life.  I have never loved being pregnant but growing my little girls very much took a toll on my body.  Bu the end of the pregnancy, I had to take a bath every night.  It was the one hour of the day when my hips and knees and feet didn’t ache to the point of not being able to move.  It became my ritual, after feeding the boys dinner.  I would fill the tub with Epsom salts and water that was as hot as I was allowed to soak in (not wanting to cook the babies an all).  I created the most beautiful bathroom filled with candles.  I lit them all, filled a cup with ice chips (I ate them compulsively during the third trimester), grabbed a snack or two and slipped into the tub.  It was the only place where everything didn’t ache. I could float in the water and be relieved of the pressure bearing down on every point of my body.  It was my only hour of relaxation.  And, in fact, on the evening of May 21st, as I stepped out of the bath, my water broke, and my girls began their journey to us.

Half of twin pregnancies end before 36 weeks.  it is incredibly common for twins to be born very prematurely and to have to spend weeks in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit.  On the other side of the coin, full term for twins is between 37 and 38 weeks. For twin mommas, an induction or a c-section is usually scheduled for 38 weeks to make sure that the babies are born by then.  Allowing twin pregnancies to go longer than 38 weeks increases the risk of stillbirth significantly.  This is because the placenta (or placentas in some twin cases) begins to calcify in it is doing double the work sustaining two babies.  Because of this risk, we scheduled an induction on May 22nd, 38 weeks, and two days of pregnancy.  (A strategic choice to land my girls in Gemini season.  Twins, it was perfect.)  The plan was in place, our bags were packed and were we ready to meet our girls on the 22nd.  But then I stepped out of the bath on the 21st and it all changed.

It was Friday night.  We were supposed to go into the hospital the next morning to bring out girls into the world, so I had been quietly and slowly preparing for the next day’s excitement.  I had been trying to move down my list of to-dos all day but as with everything I did while extremely pregnant, it had been slow going. I checked off as many things as I could and then slipped into my nightly bath.  I could hear the chaos of Trav putting the boys to bed.  The pattering of Jasper’s little feet and Trav trying to subdue him and get him into pjs.  Atty yelled for his toothbrush, and I knew Trav’s amused frustration of dealing with all of the little things that our children needed to fall asleep.  After listening to all of the chaos of bedtime preparations, I hauled myself out of my bath in order to deliver bedtime snuggles to both of them.  But as I stood there, toweling my enormous belly off, I felt a rush of water that had nothing to do with the bath.  My water had broken the day before I was supposed to deliver my sweet babies. I “rushed” out to the living room to deliver my news.

34 weeks preggers

Because it was a weekday and because Trav knew that he was about to take several weeks off for paternity leave, he had scheduled a very late meeting with a client.  Poor Trav had to ask his very pregnant and very much in labor wife if we could wait until he was finished with his meeting to go to the hospital.  I paused and told him we should call labor and delivery and see what they said we should do.  I chatted with a lovely nurse who told me that it was perfectly reasonable to wait until Trav’s meeting was done and then head in.  So, we decided to take her advice.  Trav went into his meeting, and I continued to putter around the house.  The boys were in bed so, all I had to do was reach out to my in laws to take care of the boys and make sure everything was packed in our go bag.  But it’s me.  So, I busied myself with changing the sheets on out beds and tidying up the dinner dishes.  I worked around the house with the occasional twinge of a contractions but, for the most part this twilight time of between the beginning of labor and the pain of active labor it was almost as if I was in a dream state.  I floated in a way I hadn’t since before I became pregnant and manage to accomplish more than seemed possible.  And before long the meeting was over, and we were about to walk of the door for the hospital.  The next time we walked through that door, we would be a family of six.  I would be a mother to my darling girls.  I could not wait.

To be continued…