Our Premature Twin Birth Story
Our Premature Twin Birth Story
A birth at 28 weeks gestation wasn’t the plan, but it quickly became our reality.
I woke up the week before the twins were born and peed for the bagillionth time when I saw it: my mucus plug. Okay, maybe it wasn’t my mucus plug. I was (and still am) convinced that it was, though. A shiver of panic went through me as I thought of every outcome that could happen from losing a mucus plug early. I really, really didn’t want bedrest to have to happen. I went with option stay-calm-lay-in-bed-dont-move for the day and waited. No more bleeding, no leakage. But back pains and stomach tightenings which worried me enough to warrant a hospital visit – I was only 27 weeks along.
When I went to the hospital that night the (male) doctor never checked me really. Didn’t check my cervix, didn’t do the test for mucus plug loss. He took his time to come check me, took two seconds to see some discharge and decide it was a yeast infection.
Him: this is what your discharge looked like this morning
Me: no
Him: yes it did! Its a yeast infection!
Me: ………but thats not what it looked like?
I’ve had a few yeast infections before so his answer didn’t sit right with me. I knew what I saw, I knew what a yeast. Infection looked and felt like. In the end, I didn’t push it further. He said it was a yeast infection, he was a doctor, who was I to really put that much doubt in it? But now, I wonder. Would we still be here if he HAD checked or would we have discovered something different?
A week after my L&D visit, I had a regular ultrasound scheduled in the afternoon. When she was finished, instead of handing me some cute ultrasound photos she handed me the worst news: she was rushing me to the hospital immediately. She wasn’t allowed to give me the details but she was concerned about what she saw on my ultrasound. Concerned enough that she didn’t want me standing and didn’t want me walking up the street to the hospital – I had to sit, alone since Lance was at home, and wait for a cab to come get me and drive me. Out of nowhere my day went from hanging out at the splash pad to extreme fear of early labour and bedrest. We were supposed to be moving in a week. How were we going to accomplish that if I was on bedrest? What were we going to do if my life was about to become living in a NICU for months? How were we going to take care of B while also managing me in a hospital? I was only at 28 weeks. It was about to be one hell of a long bedrest and we were supposed to be moving in a week.
When I got to triage Lance met me with B. I explained to my doctors and nurses what I had been in for the week before and each one was shocked I hadn’t been checked further.
“Out of nowhere my day went from hanging out at the splash pad to extreme fear of early labour and bedrest.”
I was told that I was 3cm dilated and being rushed in an ambulance to a different hospital because the hospital I was at wasn’t prepared to handle the high-risk pregnancy I had just become. All of this is hard to grasp when you have no signs of active labour. I hadn’t had back pains all week. I hadn’t even had braxton hicks all week. No leakage of fluids. Nothing except a constant discharge that had blood in it.
Panic set it. Had I been in labour all week? Did I cause this? Could I have prevented it? What if that doctor had actually done an internal exam last week, would we have discovered this sooner and been able to stop it right away? What if I had pushed harder for what I had thought was wrong? When we all got downstairs we realized the next wave of bad news: B wouldn’t be able to load into the ambulance with us. Lance was going to have to take her home, wait for the babysitter and then get himself back across town to the hospital. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to them properly: all I heard as the ambulance closed up and pulled away was B crying and screaming for me. The amount of pain my heart felt in that moment hurt. To put it simply, in that moment, everything that could suck: sucked.
24 hours later and my time at the hospital had been spent with not a single sign of going into labour or my dilation continuing. I kept questioning the nurses about anything and everything – did I need to stay here on bedrest? Was I actually in labour? Could I go home? Was I going to be allowed to move? I really wanted to leave the lonely hospital and its horrible food. My previous incident at L&D was making me slightly paranoid about something possibly being missed at the same time. So they came to a conclusion: if I hit 36 hours with no change I could go home to continue my bedrest.
Well, 36 hours came along and we started to get me ready to go home. There hadn’t been a single change in my stats, no leakage, no contractions. We all decided a full exam before I left would be best and I was expecting a fast exam, a quick rundown of how to deal with bedrest at home with a toddler and then a bit of waiting around for someone to pick me up. Instead, I got an exam that ended with the words “Ashleigh, we’re taking you right in for a c-section. I can feel your babies foot. I’m so sorry.”
She could feel breeched baby’s foot. Lance was at home and a 30 minute drive away. I had to have a c-section again. I was going to be taken in for the c-section before Lance was going to make it to the hospital. At that point, I just broke down and sobbed. Nurses rushed around, and I sobbed. I called Lance, and I sobbed. I called my mom and told her to get to my place as fast as she could, and sobbed. Down the hallway to surgery I went and, you guessed it, I sobbed.
Since there was no way for Lance to make it in time I made sure to have someone in the room ready to take photos of everything that was about to happen, which ended up being my anethisiologist. Not quite the birth photography I had planned. Waiting was horrible. The anticipation of surgery was horrible. Feeling alone, even though I was surrounded by tons of people, was horrible. But I didn’t really have a choice in the matter and so the second I was numb, we started.
Then I heard it: the first little squaking cry of a fresh, tiny baby. Then again with a second baby.
The twins birth left me with quite a few what-ifs. What if I hadn’t done any packing? What if I hadn’t insisted going to the park every day? What if we didn’t live on the fourth floor? What if there hadn’t been a heatwave? But I’ll never have the answers to those what if’s. I’ve had to move on past them and be thankful that my girls made it here alive and healthy and live without all the answers.
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September 17, 2020 at 1:30 am[…] OUR PREMATURE TWIN BIRTH STORY […]