Born (First of Three)

Hey, it’s me! Rachel! The other parent, the one who can’t detach from the breast pump long enough to type more than a sentence at a time! Hence the long delay in my writing up the story of the twins’ birth from my point of view. It’s not as funny as Matt’s version, and in all honesty not as much fun to read (on the plus side, it’s incredibly long), but it’s a reflection of how I experienced the event.

As regular readers of this blog know, because the twins were stubbornly breech for months and months, we had no choice but schedule a c-section. Sunday, October 26 – at a gestational age of 37 weeks and 6 days – was to be The Day, and as I had had essentially no contractions or any signs of pre-term labor the entire pregnancy, it looked like we’d make it there.

It took me a little while to come to terms with the inevitability of the c-section – I had really been holding out hope for a vaginal delivery in spite of the rather shoddy odds. However, my pregnancy taught me stark lessons about adjusting to the unexpected (starting at week seven with news of its twinness), and I tried very hard to focus on the positives: I could have my own doctor and midwife in attendance, we had the luxury of making detailed plans for family visitors, and I would be able to get as much sleep as possible the couple days beforehand so I could go into the whole ordeal well rested.

I became so comfortable with this scenario that my brain wound up in denial about the possibility that the babies could come sooner. After weeks of protesting and procrastinating, I did finally pack the hospital bag on Saturday, October 18. Matt installed the car seats that day as well. And I mailed my absentee ballot (thank goodness – every vote really counted here in Rhode Island, you know).

After watching the Red Sox win game 5 of the ALCS around midnight that Saturday, Matt and I headed up to bed and I prepared for another night of fitful, uncomfortable sleep. When I got up for a standard bathroom trip at 2 a.m., it did not take me long to realize that something was very different (specifically, that my legs were all wet and the bathmats were suddenly in serious need of a wash). I sat in the bathroom allowing the reality of my water breaking to sink in, and I actually spent a moment wondering whether this really was IT, or whether this was the sort of thing I could maybe not mention to anyone for another week. Once common sense took over, I shakily called out to Matt that my water had broken. What I didn’t say out loud, but what I knew we were both grappling with, was the fact that we would probably have babies within a few hours. Boys or girls? Healthy? NICU? Big or small? The answers to all the questions we’d been pondering for months would be clear before the sun came up. I admit to being a little freaked out.

To be continued tomorrow…

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