My First set of twins - the birth story
“We’re having a boy!!”
We found out we were pregnant when I was about 5 weeks along. I didn’t want to have an ultrasound for a while though. I had heard some scary stories about babies and ultrasound machines. Since it was my first pregnancy, I was more than ready to take every precaution, and I wanted to wait until the baby was big enough to see! I made an appointment with the closest midwife for a 9 week appointment and everything sounded good on the heart beat-doppler.
We had plans to get an ultrasound at the Women’s Pregnancy Center that my friend runs in Columbus, but we were itching to know the genders so badly, we just couldn’t wait anymore. We ordered an at-home pregnancy test. The results came in and we were so excited to share,
“We’re having a little boy!”
We look back and laugh because we were so anxious to tell everyone we were having a baby and a boy.. that we did the baby announcement and the gender reveal well before the sonogram. As time went on and I was watching my stomach..It was getting much bigger, much earlier, than I expected it to.
I was already 12 weeks when I went in and I was so excited to see my (hopefully) healthy, growing, baby! I went to the appointment alone since it was during the work week and since we really weren’t worried about anything – we just wanted to see him moving. When the sweetest nurse came in, I was already an emotional wreck. This was my first baby, and I was about to see him for the very first time.
My nurse started by telling me….”I see two,” but in misunderstood her and assured her that yes I could see too….She said it again, ‘No, I SEE TWO”…..and my heart started racing I looked at the screen and low and behold their were two little babies kicking and moving in their very own sacks. What a blessing it ended up being that I waited so long to see them because they were so formed that it was easy for me to see them fully. A rush of excitement came over me an tears just started running down my face. I had to assure the nurse they were tears of joy and then she too started crying! It was a very surreal moment and thinking about it always gives me goos-bumps.
The thought of having twins, especially for my first pregnancy, startled me. I was so excited at the thought of how awesome twins sounded, but then also so nervous as I had never even experienced what it was like to have one baby yet. I knew from so many pregnancies around me with my friends, and growing up with nine siblings that I was going to be exhausted! Little to no sleep, trying to learn how to nurse, figuring out a new schedule with a tiny human, and I just found out I was having two. I could not wait to tell Michael…… Unfortunately, I didn’t wait to see him and I FaceTimed him right away so he knew it had to be something exciting. From there, telling people was honestly my favorite thing. I think everyone was overwhelmed for me! The idea of having two babies at the same time is daunting to be sure but the excitement outweighed all my fear, and I knew I would eventually figure things out, I had to!
I had planned on doing a home-birth from the beginning (I will have another post on my choice to home-birth and my love for midwifery!). I had done a lot of research, and was very confident in my decision to be able to birth at home with my midwife. When I found out we were having twins, we had to think about this decision a little bit more, but we still decided that a home-birth was the best route for us. I continued to see my midwife and was honestly so happy with the care and nutrition advice I was given; I felt super healthy and was surprised at honestly how small I looked considering I was having two babies! I thought to myself, if this is how every pregnancy goes, I could have 20 kids! Don’t be fooled, as I soon later, found out, your first pregnancy is always the easiest!
I did everything my midwife suggested to grow healthy, twin babies. I packed the protein, took all of my supplements everyday, and I even found time to workout as much as possible! I was blessed to have no morning sickness, and most days didn’t even feel like I was pregnant – everything felt so easy!
As I approached the 39th week, I was having no signs of labor. I actually started to think I might go late, which didn’t worry me too much because I wanted the babies to be healthy and have a good weight. Well, to my surprise.. on March 19th, they both came at exactly 39 weeks! I originally thought my water broke that evening, but I had a lot more bleeding than I was comfortable with. I started to get nervous. Michael and I decided it was best to go to the hospital. While we were there, the doctors kept skirting around a ruptured placenta, but they never could tell me exactly what it was. They just said they saw more bleeding than they’d like and suggested a C-Section. Although I know I probably would have been able to have a safe home-birth, being my first pregnancy, we decided it was probably best to stay and have a cesarean.
I was lucky to have the doctor of my choice and that put me at ease. The whole C-Section experience was very traumatizing. I really don’t like needles and, if you’ve never had a cesarean.. there are many needles involved. I felt like I had to be pricked a million times. Once the drugs kicked in, all I had to do was wait thirty minutes to see my babies. It was a pretty exciting! 2 almost 7 lbs. babies were born that morning. Both, were very healthy! Some of the nurses commented on how rare it was to see a twin mom come in to deliver at 39 weeks. I consider myself very lucky!
Learning to take care of two babies at the same time just came sort of naturally after that! Just like any mother learns how to take care of her baby with experience, I had no choice, but to figure out how to take care of these two, very new, precious, infant boys.