MoreThanWeExpected.com

Gwen's Birth Day

Don't believe the hypnobirthing hype!

Gwen is our first baby and we had hoped for a natural delivery.  I mean, come on!  Women (not to mention every other species on the planet) have been having babies since the dawn of time and they didn't need any drugs.  If they could do it, so could I!

I signed us up for hypnobirthing classes hoping that I could use self-hypnosis to power through the pain.  All those women in the videos and powerpoint presentations looked so relaxed, not even a drop of sweat on their brow.  It had to be fool proof.  As it turns out, self-hypnosis it is much easier to say than do. While I had practiced the self-hypnosis techniques for weeks before the baby was due, it was all useless once the real pain of contractions set in.  Don't get me wrong; those of you who know I'm a true hippie tree-hugger at heart know that I am completely open to suggestion and the thought of going through labor without any real medical intervention was very appealing.

I had managed to tough out 45 hours of non-progressive labor, where I wasn't having classic contractions (mine were moderate but not advancing and there was no break in between them, it was all one long moderate contraction - totally shitty) and my sheer exhaustion lead to the decision for an epidural.  Shortly thereafter, the OB made the decision that the baby was too big and since she was stressed and I was stressed, and a c-section delivery was performed.  So much for Mother Nature.

In retrospect, if I'd any idea ahead of time what contractions would actually feel like, I would have known I was in labor 24 hours sooner and therefore could have started the self-hypnosis sooner.  By the time I figured out that I was in labor I was too tired and pissed off to get back to that happy place to be calm enough to concentrate on the hypnosis.  Oh well.

The Trips' Birth Day

From start to finish...

I was blessed with a very uneventful, very easy pregnancy (for triplets, anyway).  After a few weeks passed and the surprise that we were pregnant with triplets wore off I became attached to them and therefore was no longer quasi-suicidal.  You see, ours were spontaneous triplets, meaning no fertility drugs were used or administered in their making, so our surprise was pure shock and awe.  (People always ask, some assume, that we were on fertility drugs and I keep wondering what kind of nut would take fertility drugs with a one year old...)   I suffered only horrible morning sickness (but lucked out with just nausea, no throwing up) and exhaustion (falling asleep at my desk at least twice a day) but it was manageable.  I rested a lot and ate well, which was easy since I wasn't craving a lot of junk like when I was pregnant with Gwen.  I had prenatal visits twice a month with an ultrasound every other visit throughout the pregnancy so my doctor and midwives all made sure the babies and I were all very healthy.  I wasn't even ever close to developing gestational diabetes and never had protein or sugar in my urine; my blood pressure never got over 130/70-ish and I was never at risk for preeclampsia.  The babies were all very active and all moved and performed well for all their tests too.

At 29 weeks gestation (1/26) I called my mom at 11 pm to take me to the hospital.  I thought I was dying.  I was having pains that felt like gal stones but since I had all the gal bladder attacks during and following my pregnancy with Gwen, I had it removed about 3 weeks postpartum so I knew that couldn't be it.  The pain was the same though and so I assumed it was kidney stones.  Great...  Well, Tony stayed home with Gwen and my mom took me to the hospital where I was admitted, given narcotics on a pump and an IV, and passed a kidney stone that the nurse referred to as a giant piece of glass, she also said it was the biggest kidney stone she had ever seen.  I stayed in the hospital overnight so they could give me pain meds and make sure I didn't have more stones to pass (thank God I didn't!).

The following Wednesday (1/30, 30 weeks gestation) I woke up in the wee hours in more pain.  Since I had just been through the whole kidney stone thing I assumed it was another stone and since I had a scheduled OB appointment that morning I decided to tough it out.  As my 7 o'clock appointment approached the pain became more intense and my "kidney stone" fantasy dissolved as I realized my pain was actually contractions.  My OB sent me to the hospital for monitoring and since I had a stomach flu the weekend before the kidney stone debacle, she thought maybe the contractions were onset due to dehydration.  I was admitted (again) and got an IV and three bags of fluid.  When that didn't stop the contractions I got a shot of Terbutaline, which, thank goodness, stopped them to the point where my OB was comfortable enough to send me home.  I was put on light bed rest from that point on and had to stop working but was still allowed to take short trips out of the house for appointments and to put around the house, which were now as frequent as twice a week and included a Fetal Non-Stress Test and Biophysical Profile at the hospital each Wednesday and an OB visit to follow up.  With careful monitoring and my following the doctor's orders for rest I was able to carry the kids for 4 more weeks.

On Saturday February 24th, I woke up with contractions that I was trying again to brush off as dehydration contractions or Braxton Hicks.  Unfortunately, as the day wore on the contractions got stronger and more frequent and so Tony started to clean the house and pack the bags.  I felt the contractions were nothing to be concerned about because they were 2 to 6 minutes apart, only about a 2 on the pain scale, and there were whole periods of time when I wasn't having any contractions at all (and I knew if I called the doctor she would make me go in regardless so I didn't want to jump the gun).  But by 8:30 pm, while watching the red carpet report at the Oscar's, I decided it was time to call the doctor.  We made it to the hospital around 10:30 and just after being admitted my contractions heightened to about a 6 on the pain scale (still tolerable but really bad; the nurse described them as moderate to severe) and were about 1 to 4 minutes apart and I was 80% effaced and 2-3 cm dilated.  Since we knew I would have to have a c-section (I had placenta previa and the lead baby was frank breach [bum down] with the other two lying transverse [sideways], all of which determined very early on that a c-section was the only option for birth) I was dying to get the epidural and thought the whole process would be very planned and coordinated.  It wasn't.  Since my uterus was so stretched and it was contracting so badly, my OB wanted me to get a shot of Terbutaline to slow down the contractions to make the surgery less risky.  Sometime after the shot kicked in and slowed my contractions, they ordered my epidural and prepped me for surgery.  I wasn't scared at all until they told me that with multiples your uterus is so exhausted that your chances of hemorrhaging are much higher and made me sign a release for blood transfusions.  Yikes...

I was wheeled into the Elliot's Labor & Delivery operating room around 1:15 am with 20 strangers overseeing the birth of my babies (and me naked from the ribcage down); my OB was there and she had an assisting OB, there were two anesthesiologists, a plethora of nurses and surgical assistants, and each baby had their own NICU team consisting of three nurses per baby and the NICU's pediatrician overseeing them all.  Craziness.  Whatever shame I had before giving birth to multiples (which wasn't much) is gone now.  The rest is history as all three of our babies were delivered healthy at 1:55, 1:56 and 1:57 am on February 25th, 2008.  Here are some photographic highlights:

After we got out of recovery, before we were admitted to the maternity ward, we were allowed upstairs to the NICU to get our first good look at our new babies.  I was stuck on a gurney and unable to sit up so I didn't get a great look but I was happy to see that they were all stable and that I could touch them.  We made it back to the maternity ward around 3 am where we looked at the pictures and then tried to sleep.

~ GWEN RHIANNA ~

Born July 1st, 2006 at 7:46 pm, she weighed 9 lbs., 1 oz. and was 21.5" long.

Her APGAR scores were 8/9.

Gwen was always a big baby, which was evident even before she was born.

THE TRIPLETS

~ TESS OLIVIA (aka Baby A) ~

Born February 25th, 2008 at 12:55 am, she weighed 4 lbs., 14 oz. and was 17.9" long.  Her APGAR scores were 6/7.

Tess was the lead baby, at the bottom of the uterus, and therefore was the weakest because she bore the weight of her sister and brother for 8 months.  Tess began her life in the real world on a C-Pap machine for apnea in the Elliot Hospital's NICU where she gained weight and got strong enough to come home just 2 days after her little brother and sister, on March 13th, 2008.

~ NORA PAIGE (aka Baby B) ~

Born February 25th, 2008 at 12:56 am, she weighed 5 lbs., 8 oz. and was 18.5" long.  Her APGAR scores were 7/8.

Nora is Tess' identical twin but spent most of her time in utero hanging out with Holden.  She was the biggest and strongest baby but also needed help breathing and was on an C-Pap machine for apnea and needed some photo-therapy for jaundice a few days after she was born.  She did great in the Elliot's NICU and came home March 10th, 2008, exactly two weeks after being born.

~ HOLDEN ANTHONY (aka Baby C) ~

Born February 25th, 2008 at 12:57 am, he weighed 4 lbs., 13 oz. and was 17.9" long.  His APGAR scores were 7/8.

Holden was the most active in utero and was no exception after being born.  He was the only one I heard cry in the delivery room and needed the least amount of oxygen supplementation and help breathing as his apnea episodes were infrequent and often self corrected.  Holden did have jaundice and needed to spend several days under the UV lamps while it improved.  Holden spent his time with his sisters in the NICU but overcame his jaundice and his apnea to come home on March 10th, 2008.

My belly stretched to planetary proportions; believe it or not I was actually all belly, not much fat (well, not much fatter than when I started anyway, LOL).  Here is what I looked like, at around 33 - 34 weeks, about 1 week before going into labor.  I would never have shared this picture with the world as I think it's a little personal but since my mother has shown pictures of my belly progressing to gigantism to everyone she's come in contact with since I got pregnant it's a moot point.  Oddly enough she thinks breast pumps and nipple shields should be kept private but my naked belly is good enough to share with strangers at the grocery store.

Any picture can be enlarged by clicking on it.  Pictures have descriptions when you hover your mouse over them.

This is where you'll find only the cutest pictures and most exciting stories about our instant family!  Gwen and the triplets, Tess, Nora and Holden, thank you for looking us up and hope you'll come back to visit again soon.

Birth Stats     ~*~*~*~     Labors & Deliveries

Our Story:  When we decided to start a family way back in 2003 we had no idea what we were ultimately in for.  It took us a while to get pregnant the first time, about 16 months; a pregnancy which ended in a miscarriage at 11 weeks.  We laid low for a couple of months before we got back in the baby-making-saddle.  Again, we tried old-school style for a few months before I started charting my cycles; after several months of charting I finally got pregnant!  Because of my previous miscarriage I went straight to the doctor for blood work which showed, as with my first pregnancy, that my progesterone level was low.  I was put on supplements early enough to sustain the pregnancy and 38 weeks later Gwen was born.

After Gwen's first birthday we started talking about when we wanted to have another baby.  I was all for waiting another year or two but Tony wanted to have all our kids close together so that we would be young enough to tend to them and have them all grown and moved out by the time we retired.  Since it had taken so long for us to get pregnant the first two times we thought the "we're not really trying but we're not really taking precautions" birth control method would be sufficient for a few months, our first mistake...

We took a vacation, one that we had planned for several months coming.  We were excited to get away as a family, a long awaited treat.  While we were away, as many couples find, we were much more relaxed, not so concerned with work, parents, appointments, etc., and found that the alone time we had while Gwen was sleeping was much more enchanting.  Needless to say, we made the most of our relaxed outlooks and schedules.  Just three days later, on our trip home, I found myself exhausted, frustrated, and mentally spacy.  I knew something was going on and took a home pregnancy test, which came up negative.  One week later I tried again, this time the result was much different.  I immediately called the doctor so that my progesterone could be tested ASAP, just in case.  I knew I was only three weeks past conception but the doctor said I should get an ultrasound to check for a heartbeat in the next two weeks as my hormone levels indicated I was already 6 - 8 weeks along.  They were the doctors after all and knew best so I just went along for the ride.  The ultrasound showed that I was in fact only 5 - 6 weeks along and that there was not just one gestational sac, but two.  The ultrasound tech informed us that since there were two sacs we could expect two babies; it wasn't until we met with the doctor after the ultrasound that we were informed we had identical twins in the one sac and a fraternal triplet in the other.  The chances of conceiving spontaneous triplets are around 1 in 8,100.  Quite the surprise considering we weren't even trying to get pregnant!

A huge change was in store for our small family, trading in my sporty Mazda 6 for a Toyota Sienna (the only auto, by the way, which will accommodate four rear-facing car seats), leaving a job I loved to be a stay at home mom to three screaming newborns (which also cut our income by 30%), filling our small starter home to the brim with baby toys and cribs, and for Gwen, who would have to give up her role as Center of the Universe to three siblings all at once.  While our new life is taxing financially, physically and most of all mentally, we are doing the best we can and will come to look upon this time in our lives as one we wouldn't have changed for the world.  For now I can't wait for that day to come...