The Story of The Twins - Part 1

So, I've been wanting to write this out for the boys (and myself) for a LONG time, but just haven't gotten around to it. It amazes me to watch them, to see how much they have grown and how far they have come. It's been an amazing journey that started soon after my husband and I got married. We got married November 17th, 2007 and decided that, if possible, we'd like to have kids right away. We both love kids and didn't see any real reason to wait. We took our honeymoon to China and on the way back I thought something was up. I just didn't quite feel 'right'. A few days after coming back we took a home pregnancy test and it turned positive so fast I couldn't believe it!




We knew our lives were about to change dramatically, but we still didn't know the full scope of things. Our pregnancy started out pretty routine, although there were a few things that hinted we might have been carrying more then we expected. I had pretty rough morning sickness and then all the sudden in the second trimester I started putting on a ton of weight. I should put in at this point also that earlier in the pregnancy I had prayed for twins. I love twins and thought (and still think!) that it would be a blast to have twins. But, every time we went in for our checkups we would only hear one heartbeat. Finally we went in for our 20 week ultrasound and at first the technician said there was only one baby in there. For a little while I freaked out. I kept thinking about how big I had gotten and about how my sister (who is the oldest in our family) was over 9 lbs when my mom delivered her. About twenty minutes later the technician asked us if we had twins in our family. We responded that we do and were both a little curious as to why. Then she said, "Congratulations you're having twins!"


The twins hearts side by side

Because there were two, we no longer qualified for the midwife program and had to go to the 'Twins Clinic'. We tried to keep up our normal routine, but I kept getting bigger and bigger and thus had to slow down a ton. We took one last trip to the Big Island (I was 24 weeks), but that was the last time I was allowed to fly until after the birth.



When we were 26 weeks along, things began to get a little interesting. Alexandra came out to visit Oahu and while we were out driving around we got rear-ended. Definitely not a big deal, but enough that I started having contractions. We went to the hospital and things slowed down so they sent us home. But, after that anytime we did a lot of physical activity I would get contractions. Also, at this point I started to swell. It wasn't too bad at first, but by the end of the pregnancy I would put on about 30 lbs of water weight.

June 25th, 2008 (32 weeks and 5 days) came like any other day. It was a Wednesday so we went to church in the evening. My husband had been very busy at work and had gone in early that morning so he was pretty tired and ready to go to bed that night. Shortly after we got in bed (I don't think either of us had fallen asleep) I rushed to the bathroom as my water broke. We would later discover that LT had broken his water, but BP's was still in tact (there was 1 placenta but 2 sacs). After debating for a few minutes if my water had actually broken, I woke up my husband and we called the hospital. They said to come in right away, but of course we weren't completely ready, so we had to finish packing. Around 12:30 AM we finally finished packing up the car and we rushed to the hospital. Thankfully my water broke in the middle of the night, or traffic could have been much much worse. We arrived at the gate to Tripler and oddly enough the gate person asked us for our insurance. They almost NEVER ask you for this if your car has the right tags on it. But he did, and we couldn't find ours. I think when we got in the car accident a few months earlier we had given the card to the police and never got it back. Anyways, after some frantic searching my husband asked the man to please let us through, since I was in labor. The man kindly let us through.

We made our way up to Labor and Delivery and got to triage. There they hooked us up to all the machines and verified that the babies were doing fine and that my water had broken. Since we were so early, they gave us a shot of steroids to help develop the babies lungs (baby lungs don't fully develop until approximately 34 weeks) and gave us some medicine to try and stop my labor. After triage they put me in a wheelchair and put us in a room. It was a long night with lots of phone calls, lots of doctors, and not much rest. After a short visit from a pediatrician who told us what could go wrong with 32 week babies, the doctors told us that my labor was progressing and they didn't think they could stop it, so they were going to take us off the meds. I honestly was a bit relieved at this point, mostly because the contractions were getting harder and harder.

Our labor progressed pretty rapidly for the first few hours, but then we hit what felt like a wall and started to move very slowly. At this point the anesthesiologist came in and put in an epidural. We originally hadn't wanted one put in at all, but when we found we were having twins, we also found out that they like to put epidurals in for women who are delivering twins in case they need to do an emergency c-section. So, we agreed and had one put in at this point. After they 'tested' it out (they gave us a small dose to make sure it worked), I asked for a little bit more. It was nice to have a small break and rest a bit before the pushing started. It was also nice because right after we had some visitors from our church!



Around 2 PM the doctors came in and said we were ready to deliver! My husband and I were SO excited and definitely ready for this after being in labor for 14 hours. They wheeled us into the OR (where they do all the deliveries for multiples). They put Dan into some scrubs and prepared me for delivery.

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