Decebal & Pascal

I gave birth to twins in the spring of 1996. April 4th, to be exact. Here is how it went.

I had been dilated to 2 cm. for about three weeks and was therefore under a lot of observation. I had been in and out of the hospital during that time but so far everything had gone okay. Braxton-Hicks contractions came and went, but they weren't painful. The doctor wanted my pregnancy to last as long as possible, to give the babies a better chance when they came out.

On Thursday morning, April 4th, I was reading at about 1 a.m. When I got up to go to the bathroom, I felt a leak where there usually wasn't one. I got pretty excited but thought maybe I was just imagining things. I waited a little while and felt it again. My water had started to leak. Since I was not getting any contractions, I decided to wait awhile before waking up my husband.

At about 3 a.m., I woke D.H. up and told him what was happening. He was so groggy, poor thing, he wasn't sure what was going on. My bag was ready so I got dressed and we went to the hospital. It was pretty exciting. I was a couple of days over 36 weeks, so I knew the babies would be OK. When we got to the hospital, the doctor on call could not find evidence that my water had broken. She tried to tell me I was imagining things (as if!) but I convinced her otherwise. Eventually they agreed and put me up in an LDR room.

We waited around for something to happen until 8 a.m. At that time, I felt like someone had just punched my cervix, and WHOOSH, my water really broke. That's when the pain started.

The first baby was head down but the second was breech. My own doctor had indicated that he would do a C-section, no questions asked. However, my doctor was on vacation (it figures!) so I got another doctor. She was going to deliver my babies normally, which made me very happy. She had lots of experience delivering breech babies, so I was not worried.

I started walking around trying to withstand the pain. By 9 a.m. I was 6 cm. dilated. Things were going pretty quickly. I guess when you have two babies pushing on one cervix, things move fast. About that time, the nurse suggested I take an epidural, more as a precaution in case they had to do an emergency C-section. I did not want to, but I was going into transition and could not take the pain very well. So, in came the anesthesiologist.

Once I got the epidural, it took just another half hour and I was at 10 cm. The epidural was good enough that I could still feel the contractions and was able to push. I pushed for a while and delivered Decebal Emil at 2:14 p.m. He weighed in at five pounds, thirteen ounces, and was doing OK. I got to see him for a bit, but they had to take him away because he had fluid in his lungs that was not clearing out right away.

Now we had to deliver the second one. The doctor gave me an episiotomy in anticipation of delivering Twin B, in breech position. However, Twin B had no inclination to come out. I pushed and pushed, to no avail. He was way up in my uterus, right under my liver and was not coming down. They did not want to break his sack because of the danger of cord prolapse. Then, after about 30 minutes, the baby started to go under stress. So they sewed up the episiotomy and wisked me off for an emergency C section.

There must have been 15 people in the operating room. Anyway, Pascal Bernard was born 44 minutes after his brother. He weighed in at five pounds, twelve ounces and even though he also had some fluid in his lungs, his cleared out pretty quickly.

At this point I was exhausted but happy that my boys were doing well. I got to see them quickly and even though they were in incubators for one night, nothing was wrong with them. They came to stay with me after the first night.

I was very weak after the birth, but recovered quickly. I didn't take any of the pain medication for the C-section after going home because I never needed it. I nursed my boys until they weaned themselves off at 15 months. Two years after the delivery my scar disappeared, the sutures were nice and clean and I never had a problem.

So, I got to experience both a vaginal and a C-section delivery all in one pregnancy. In a way, I don't care about the birth as long as my babies are OK. The nurses were great, so were the doctors and I'm glad I delivered in the hospital, or Pascal may not have made it.

The moral of the story is that birth plans must be flexible. I was convinced that I wanted a vaginal birth but when Pascal went under stress, I did not care what they had to do to take him out.

I am now pregnant again, hopefullly with only one baby. This time, I am hoping to have a more relaxed birth.