Labors & Deliveries
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.
