Christian & Cameron's Birth Story

On Friday, June 17, 2005 I went into an outpatient center to have carpal tunnel surgery. They asked the usual questions and when they arrived to "when was the last time you had a menstrual cycle", I rolled my eyes thinking that I couldn't believe I was going to have to explain this again. I told them how I had been on Synthroid for my under active thyroid and that I stopped taking it and my menstrual cycle had stopped. I told them I wasn't pregnant because over a 2-month period I took about 5 pregnancy tests and they all came back negative. I said with me stopping the medicine and all the stress I was under (we had just bought a house, work was busy, I knew I needed surgery!) obviously my period was going to stop for a while. Well, thankfully the nurse made me do a pregnancy test which came back positive. I was so shocked. My husband was working 2nd shift at the time and couldn't be there for the surgery, so my dad had driven me in. I didn't know what to think or say. I ended up leaving, not having the surgery done.

I pretended to have the surgery done though and drove to my husband’s job to tell him. It was 2 days before father's day so I got him a father's day card and put the test in it. He opened it (thinking I had done the card from the dogs) and was stunned when he saw the test. When I asked if he knew what it was he said, "yeah a pregnancy test" and then it hit him! "You’re pregnant?" he asked and when I said yes he started hugging and kissing me and grabbed his phone to call everyone he knows. I was so relieved that he was happy. Even though we weren't not trying to have a baby, we weren't planning on it either. I was 24 and he was 26 and we had just bought a fixer-upper house and were trying to throw all of our money into fixing that up. A baby would be sure to throw everything off. Still we couldn't have been more excited.

I went on that Tuesday, June 21st, to the doctors and the nurse practitioner said she didn't think I was more than 12 weeks along. Of course my husband about fell off of his chair, "12 weeks?!?!? Only you would be 3 months along and not know it!" he said, joking around. The nurse practitioner wanted me to go for an ultrasound just to be safe and I got one scheduled for that Friday, June 24th. As the woman was doing the ultrasound, my husband, and I were making jokes back and forth. Finally she asked what they had said at the doctor's office and I told her that they said I was no more than 12 weeks along. She told me that I was way further along, and that sent my husband off again with more jokes. After a little while she said, "Not only are you not 12 weeks along, you are way further along." Well she had already said that, so I wasn't sure why she was repeating herself so I said, "Geez you scared me! For a second, I thought you were going to say twins or something!" Well my husband had the same thought so we both kind of giggled and then the woman said very slowly, "Twins…yeah". My husband and I laughed again, but the woman wasn't saying anything so he asked if she was joking and she said, "No, you are expecting twins and you are 5.5 months along". My husband and I about died… we couldn't believe it. I was expecting twin boys and I was halfway through my pregnancy. No one believed me that I had no clue, but I didn't. I was a first time mother so I didn't know what it felt like when the boys kicked, which they did a lot of, more at each other than me really.

The pregnancy went pretty good, until the end it was a little rough then. I had finally decided that I would go to work for 1 more week and then take off to get stuff done and rest. Well that Saturday morning (I was 2 days shy of 9 months) I woke up and got a shower and was about to get dressed when something leaked out of me. I called my mom and she said my water was probably leaking to call the doctor. So I did and then I woke my husband up to get ready because the doctor wanted us to go to the hospital. He was so funny wandering around the house in a daze trying to figure out what he needed to do. He was so excited he couldn't even find his way to the shower without me pointing it out! The whole time I couldn't even get off of the toilet because my water would leak every time I stood up. I kept trying to put pads in my underwear, but I would leak right through them and all over my clothes. Finally my husband suggested I put a diaper in my underwear, so that's what I did. Boy did I feel silly, but it worked! So we headed to the hospital and my mom followed. We got there around 10:15 that morning. I was only dilated 1 cm, but they couldn't send me home because of the risk of infection. They used the inducing gel in me twice, which eventually brought contractions on.

That night my mom, my husband, my sister-in-law, and my mother-in-law sat around waiting for the boys to arrive. My contractions would be 1 minute to 11 minutes apart and overnight they stopped. The next morning at around 6:15 am they used the Pitocin in me. They slowly dripped that into my IV, and steadily increased it throughout the day. They had 3 belts around me, 2 for the heartbeats and 1 to measure the contractions. Well since I wasn't dilating at all they inserted something that would tell them how strong my contractions were. Then later on the one babies heartbeat fell off of the monitor range so they had to insert a lead inside me and put it on his head so they could keep track of his heartbeat. Around 2 or 3 I started getting stronger contractions and they finally gave me some kind of pain medicine. This helped me to sleep. I was in a ton of pain between the contractions and all of the things inside of me, so the sleep was a definite help. The doctor decided that if by 3:30 I wasn't progressing they would have to do a C-section. I was really scared, but when he came to check me at 3:30 I had dilated to 6 cm. Around 5 they came in and gave me the epidural (aww my favorite word) and this really helped to relax me. With twins they put you in the operating room in case the 2nd baby flips around and they would have to do a C-section, so my husband was the only one allowed in with me. The first baby born, Christian, was vacuumed out and taken away to the NICU immediately. I didn't know it at the time but he had a tear in his umbilical cord and had lost a ton of blood. Thankfully he didn't need a transfusion and although they put him on oxygen and didn't feed him for a couple of days (they weren't sure if he would be able to handle the food), he is fine now and doing great. It was so hard seeing him in the little incubator with an IV in his head, and I was so upset when we couldn’t take him home until a week after his brother and I were released. He was born at 8:20 pm and my next baby, Cameron, wasn't born until 11:16 pm. They were almost 3 hours apart. When they had done my ultrasound they screwed up and switched the boys and so since Christian was only 5 lbs 1 ounce and Cameron was 5 lbs 13 ounces, I went from being dilated 10 cm to 8 after giving birth to Christian. So I had to push to re-open my cervix and also to get Cameron to move down into the birth cannel (he was still really high). Eventually he got down and I was so exhausted I couldn't push anymore so they had to vacuum him out also.

It was such a hard labor and birth, but I'm doing better now. I had a lot longer of a healing period and I had a lot of scar tissue build up, but that seems to be going away now and the boys are growing and doing great. They will be 4 months on February 2nd and they are each over 12 lbs now, which makes me feel good. They were in such a low bracket when they were born and now they are above average. They are giggling and "talking" constantly now and are just such sweet, happy, healthy babies. I can't wait to have 100 more!