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Rianne Katherine & Karen Margaret's Birth

This is a rather long story. I'm not trying to ramble but I went into labour 2 times and gave birth twice so please cut me some slack!

My pregnancy was normal until about the 22nd week when I had my first ultrasound. The tech was maneuvering the probe around for a measurement when a circle appeared in the corner of the screen. I thought "Gee, that looks like another baby, but what do I know?" That was when the tech yelled "There's another baby in there!!!" I can guarantee though, that I was more surprised than she was!

This discovery changed a normal, albiet very morning sick (7 months worth) pregnancy into a high risk affair. On the scale where a 7 is high risk, I was a 14. Oh my. However, my GP is careful and after some more checks and a couple of OB refferals (for OB delivery I would have had to go to another city, something I very much wanted to avoid). We decided that unless something went wrong, he would do the delivery.

I woke one morning at 32 weeks after a night of constant pain. My back would spasm in waves that ebbed and peaked but never went away. (Sound familiar to anyone?) This didn't fit any description we'd learned of labour, but I was so miserable that we called the doctor at home (on Thanksgiving yet!). He told us to come in and get looked at.

During the NST, they discovered my "back pain" was contractions, 3 min apart. This alarmed my docter a great deal, they were in no way equipped to deal with 2 preemies! Fortunately, the internal exam showed no softening, no dilation, plug still intact. However, I was admitted and placed on Vasodilan to stop the contractions. Later tests showed a kidney infection and a second iv of antibiotic was run into the other arm.

I spent the next 3 days with a fever of 104, 24 nursing care and 24 hour monitoring (that gel gave me a terrible rash!) I remember very little except watching the babies heartbeats go up to 210 when my fever spiked. At one point they considered flying me to the nearest hospital with an NICU - a 1.5 hour flight away. However, the meds kicked in and the contractions stopped.

After 10 days I went home and was told to "take it easy" and not stand for more than a short time or walk up stairs. Twice more in the next 6 weeks I was hospitalized, once for another infection, once for high blood pressure. It got to the point that I would go to my check up with my bags packed in the car. To this day I'm sure my preeclampsia was white-coat hypertension.

By my 3rd admission, everone was much calmer. I was now a very safe 39 weeks and the babies were both still growing. I was on blood-pressure monitoring and NST every other day but was allowed out on a pass. On the evening of Nov 26, I was ready for monitoring but was told that the machine was being used by a lady in labour, to go out on my pass and have the NST done the next day. If everything was fine, I would be discharged until labour. My blood-pressure was fine but there hadn't even been any BH for 2 days.

Next morning, I was hooked up for the NST (11:00 am). Shortly after, my husband said "Look, a contraction." I hadn't felt it, but I could see them. They were 7 min apart and after 2 or 3 I could feel them. I asked the mat nurse if I was in labour (we'd been fooled twice now) and she said to go for a walk. I went half-way down the corridor and said "This is too uncomfortable, let's go back to the room." (Mostly because the size of by abdomen had pulled muscles in my back and it was painful to sit up, let alone stand and walk. The contractions hurt more too.)

About an hour later my doc came by. No-one at this point had actually comitted themselves to saying I was in labour. I said "I guess I'm not going home huh?" He looked at me and said dryly "Your contractions are 7 minutes apart and you can't make it down the hall. No, you are not going home."

I was sort of surprised. After 7 weeks of of and on and hearing "Anytime after 36 weeks", I found the end of the waiting a bit of a shock.

After that, things progressed pretty normally. The contractions were strong tightenings that I could breathe through with my husband to help me focus and his hand to squeeze. As things got stronger, so did the back labour. Finally, feeling very wimpy, I told Jim "I'm sorry, I just can't take it. I want some Demerol." He was very supportive and fetched the nurse. He returned with my doctor in tow. The doc drew up the dose in front of me and said "I'm just going to examine you and see how far you've progressed (it was about 5 pm, so I was 6 hours into labour). He did the exam and said "7 cm" and I thought "I guess I'm not getting any Demerol then!" We knew that they didn't want to give me Demerol late in labour because it might depress the babies' breathing. We figured they would probably be small anyway and didn't need any other problems as well.

Then the odd thing happened: the back labour stopped. (WOW!) I kidded him "You say go home, I go into labour, you show me a drug, the pain goes away. What do you use for an anesthetic?"

The next part of labour was intense. The contractions were strong and consumed all my energy to focus through them and hurt but were not painful. The nurses told me I was so calm they wished they had filmed me for a childbirth video. (I was way too shy to even consider that!) When I got into transition, I was ok if I could breathe and hold Jim's hand (nearly broke it by grabbing it the wrong way once!). I was unable to cope with any other stimulus, especially touch or movement and would say "No, no, I can't!!" when asked to do something (like get on a gurney to move to the birthing/OR room). I hated having to roll over for the internal. As I was being wheeled in, the doc said to Jim, "Well, I guess we should get gowned up." I found out later that as soon as he got into the change room, he began throwing on clothes like a madman. Seems the last exam had put me at 10cm! At that point, Jim decided he'd better hurry too!

They could have waited. I pushed for an hour. They called in the support team because they thought the birth was immiment and then sent them back to the cafeteria to wait because things were slower than expected. They had just got back to the cafeteria and were called up again, the births really were imminent this time, honest! They were right. I didn't feel the first baby move down, but I felt the crowning! Earlier on in the pregnancy, I sort of hoped the babies would be in a position that would require a c-section. Our pre-natal class had learned about crowning, the "ring of fire" stage of labour. I couldn't picture this feeling and was not real keen to experience ANYTHING called a "ring of fire"!

Well, now I knew and yes, the description was very accurate. Jim leaned over for a peek and said "Just a little tearing dear." He told me later that as soon as he said it, I kept tearing and tearing. He hadn't say anything more because he didn't want to scare me. He did use the word "hamburger", about 2 days later. I forgave him.

After the head was born, the doctor asked me to stop pushing for a moment so I did, mostly. I heard someone mutter "cord twice", but no one seemed upset. One more push and I heard Jim yell "It's a girl! It's Rianne! She's here!" I didn't see her, they whisked her away to give her some oxygen and I was still busy in labour.

After she was born, one doctor examined my abdomen and said "Head down", another one did the same and said "Breech". (Gee guys, I guess SOMEONE is going to be right, one way or another.) I had gone into labour with one baby head down and engaged and the other transverse across the top of the the uterus, forming a T-shape. No-one knew which way the top baby would go once there was room to do so.

I suppose I should mention that at this point, there was me, my husband, my doc, his nurse, an anesthatist, a scrub nurse, plus a doc and a nurse for each baby in this room for a total of 10 people. So much for being shy.

As I worked on each contraction to push out the second baby, I rested a bit in between. During one of these lulls, they brought me Rianne's id form to sign. I guess they wanted to make sure they had each baby tagged properly. I just signed and looked at the footprints "She's got her daddy's feet!"

About 8 minutes after Rianne was born, I gave a big push and FELT the baby leave my body. Everyone exclaimed and then was quiet. I lay there wondering what had gone wrong. I think I asked "What happened? I thought the baby was born?" Jim just said "Well, these two feet came out, kicked a bit and then went back inside."

3 minutes later, (the interval between contractions) one doc was feeling my abdomen and pronouncing direly "It's been 3 minute's, lets get that baby out of there." Meaning for me to push, even though I had no urge to do so. I just waited for the contraction and pushed. Out came our second daughter (again), but this time she stayed put.

This time, I actually got to see my babies. My poor husband didn't know what to do. He did laps of the delivery room, going from me to Rianne, to Karen and back to me again.

I was in a state of amazed shock. I just kept looking from one to the other, trying to drink it all in. I never did get that post-birth euphoria some moms get, I think it may have been because I had to split my focus. It's ok, I sure loved them anyway.

My recovery was pretty good I think. I never did find out the degree of the tear except to learn that there was "a fair bit of bleeding." Not the doc's fault, I never asked. I did learn that if you tighten up the muscles on your thighs and bottom BEFORE you sit on a chair or toilet and THEN relax them, it does not pull on your stiches nearly so much. I did attempt breastfeeding, but it didn't work out (I did go on and successfully breastfeed subsequent children though). Their Dad was always right there in the middle of anything that needed to be done for them and is still a super Dad to this day.

Rianne Katherine b. 9:16 pm 27 Nov 91 5lb 2 oz
Karen Margaret b. 9:27 pm 27 Nov 91 6lb 10 oz
Mummy to Shelly (12y), Timmy (10y) and Robyn (16 days!)