The Twins Arrival Story

(This is actually Chris and I going to a different doctor appointment - I'm 33 weeks here)

Tuesday, Feb 22 9:30 am: Chris drove me to what would be my final prenatal dr visit. The nurse took my blood pressure - it was high. It is never high. I have had high blood pressure once in my entire life and it was ironically at the same dr visit, same nurse, 3 years ago on the day that I ended up delivering Kalle. The dr was concerned about my high blood pressure then and sent me to the hospital for 'monitoring' - I never left the hospital that day, I delivered Kalle that night. So, when on this day the nurse registered my blood pressure as high I said to Chris, well I guess I'm in labor like last time! Kind of joking. The dr re-checked it and said it was fine. Must've been a fluke. (or a contraction! hello!!) We discussed again how when I go into labor I go to the hospital and whichever dr from her practice is on call then, they would call her specifically and she would come over to assist in the delivery. She assured me she would be there, that there would be two doctors at my delivery, one to catch the first baby and one to push and manipulate the second baby in my tummy to try and flip him head down. Then, she sent me home with a scheduled induction date of March 20th (38 weeks). We all knew I would never make it to that day. My final stats:

• OB app - 34 weeks 3 days
• total weight gain - 34 lbs.
• tummy size - so large she didn't even measure me (probably better that way)
• stretch marks - Chris said I finally got three little ones under my belly button, but I couldn’t see them ;)
• dilated - 3 cm
• effaced - 80%
• contractions - more than 5 per hour (I was really uncomfortable)
• babies positions - Baby A vertex, Baby B breech

(Jada and I posing - I'm 33.5 weeks)

5:00pm: Since I had been on bed rest I had only left my house once or twice a week for doctor appointments. I felt that I had tried very hard to be lying down allllll the time and for the first time I was actually feeling confident that I was going to make it full-term! Really, I kept thinking that I would be like 40 plus weeks and still hugely pregnant or something absolutely ridiculous like that J Well, my father had been in town that weekend for the President’s Day holiday and he wanted to play a prank on Chris’ best friend Rick right before he left to go home. The thing is, Rick is a huge Miami fan and my dad is a huge Buckeye fan. Last year Chris and Rick flew to Ohio to go to the Miami v. OSU game and Rick hung a Miami flag on my dad’s house and my dad has been dying to get him back ever since! Coincidentally, Rick was out of town this day so my dad had a bunch of Ohio State garb to decorate Rick & Allison’s house with to ‘prank’ him! I so badly didn’t want to miss out on this funny experience so I told everyone that I was coming along for the ride! For the first time I left my house to go somewhere other than the doctors! I sat in the front seat (lying down of course) and I never got out of the car – I just watched as my family decorated Rick’s house – it was hilarious! I guess I learned my lesson though…I probably should’ve just stayed home… hehe ;-)

10:30pm: I just set my alarm for early the next morning so we could wake up before Jada and go into her bedroom and sing Happy Birthday to her in the morning. Then I laid down in bed next to Christopher. My water broke. I began to cry, knowing that these boys would be born in a few hours - on Jada's birthday. What are the chances? I have literally been saying for months that I was fine with any day these babies came, as long as it was AFTER Jada's birthday. That was the ONE day I did NOT want them to be born. I totally jinxed myself I guess. Jada just loves her birthday so much and its supposed to be the one day she can be special and get whatever she wants. Oh well. Chris already has these brilliant plans on how we can celebrate them separately or whatever. Seriously, what are the chances??? Before I can get the emotional waterworks really going Chris gets in my face and tells me to cut it out, everything is going to be great - we are about to meet our sons!! He was right, I was overreacting, but I was TERRIFIED. Its funny how I spent all this time knowing that I was going to have to deliver these babies and then when the moment comes that its actually going to happen, I freak out and start thinking I can't do this! I can't do this! Once Chris talked some sense into me, I said ok lets go to the hospital! And then Chris says sheepishly, let me just get a few things... oh boy. I have had MY hospital bag and the twins' hospital bag packed for weeks and Chris has procrastinated. So I took a shower while he packed. I knew from previous experience that showering wouldn't occur for a while so I figured I might as well get good and clean before the big delivery! Don't worry, I did not dry my hair - or even brush it - and I didn't put on any makeup or anything crazy. I literally wrapped my wet hair in a towel (and put another towel in my pants) and got in the car.

(Me at 34 weeks and 3 days - headed to the hospital to deliver my twins!)

(Chris 'cleaning up' my mess... aka amniotic fluid. Hes a goof ball. It was kind of funny though, since I wasn't in any pain yet)

(Chris and I off to the hospital! We are excited to finally meet our boys!!)

11:30pm: We get to the hospital, the doors are locked, so I push the button and announce - My water broke! Let me in! A nurse comes to get us and I have completely saturated my towel by that point. I tell her - I'm having twins, this is my third delivery and these boys are going to come really fast. She believes me and we bi-pass the triage room and go straight to a delivery room. Its not busy so a few nurses come in and help me get set up quickly. They hook up the contraction monitor - I'm contracting enormously every minute. Like so big they are off the monitor. The nurse whistles. I am not in pain yet. Chris has to go fill out a bunch of paper work and then I have to fill out a bunch of paperwork. You'd think they'd remember me - I was here just 4 weeks ago! Oh well. By the time we finish the nurse finally checks me, I'm at a 4. I tell her I want an epidural, even though I'm not in pain yet. She calls the anesthesiologist who takes almost an hour to get there.

Wednesday, February 23 12:00am: Its Jada's birthday. She is asleep at home and has no idea that we are at the hospital. This is unbelievable.

1:45am: A very, very grumpy anesthesiologist finally rushes in. He is pissed. Apparently, he was not expecting to be called in from home at 1 in the morning. Chris and I try to suck up to him a little, after all he is the one with the ginormous needle about to go into my spine. He is not having it. I have lost a lot of amniotic fluid by now and my contractions are really strong, but still manageable, I remember how bad they are going to get. The A is totally frustrated with me. I'm not sitting the right way, I'm moving the wrong hip forward, I'm not hunching my back over enough, my spine is apparently crooked....blah blah blah. He is soooo unhappy. I am trying my very hardest! And still having strong contractions every stinking minute! I keep apologizing for living and he just gets more angry. He is pushing my spine over and over again with his finger soooo hard it’s worse than the contractions! He sticks me at least twice and then takes the needle out and announces that he can't do it, I have scoliosis. I tell him, I most certainly do not have scoliosis - my sister does and I was checked repeatedly for it. Plus I have already had two epidurals in my life, one at this very hospital! If he wasn't pissed off enough already that did it. I thought he was going to storm out of the room! Instead, he swore and grumbled and complained and stuck that huge needle in me one more time and said if this doesn't work than he’s going to have to start all over again and it will be more difficult. I lay down, praying he'll just leave. He asks me if my legs are warm and tingly yet, I say yeah a little. I lied. He left muttering. I was not warm and tingly. The nurse checks me again, about a 5 and 100% effaced.

2:30am: The A left, the nurse leaves, and Chris and I are alone and we're both exhausted. Chris lays on the pull out chair next to me and I am lying flat on my back trying not to move and disturb the epidural thing in my back, hoping my legs will go numb. They don't. Chris falls asleep. I am contracting about every 2-3 minutes but they are long and hard and I am feeling every single one. (I know I somehow got some meds in me, just enough to take the edge off, but this epidural def did NOT work right) Every time I get a contraction I am sure I am going to either throw up or faint. I just can't handle lying flat on my back it makes me sooo sick. The worst 45 min of my entire delivery passes by. I am getting delirious, I am shaking ridiculously and I have vomited in my mouth at least twice. I don't know why I just laid there for so long but I just couldn't move or talk or do anything rational at this point. And I could NOT for the life of me find that dang nurse's call button!

3:15am: I cannot stand it any more! I scream at Chris, he flies out of his bed in a panic and I say I am going to puke or faint or both. Something is seriously wrong I need the nurse. He finds the nurse and she comes in all calm and I am shaking like mad and I say I'm seriously ill, something is really really wrong. She helps me roll onto my side so that I can breathe and calm down. As soon as I roll over, something inside me shifts and I literally feel my baby's head start to pop out. I remember looking up at Chris and saying, I feel pressure! I have got to push! This baby is coming out! The nurse calmly checks me and then kinda freaks out. The baby is literally coming out. My nurse runs to call the dr and about four other nurses rush in and they start gathering all my cords and in 10 seconds I'm being wheeled on my bed down to the operating room. (They deliver all twins in the OR instead of a regular delivery room, just in case they have to do an emergency c-section) At this point I'm no longer delirious, but I am only aware of one thing - my desperate need to push this baby out! I'm still lying on my side and the epidural cord is taped to the shoulder that I'm lying on. I feel a yank at my cord, hear a snap and see something flying out of the corner of my eye. Chris says, umm - was that her IV? No, it was my dang epidural cord. The nurses wheeled me out so fast and someone forgot to bring the medicine part the cord was hooked to so it snapped, amazingly the weight of my enormous body prevented the cord from ripping right out of my back! I hear the nurses try to dismiss it to Chris as if it were no big deal as they quietly argue about who messed up. We have not stopped moving. The nurse and Chris are both in my face telling me to hold that baby in! DO NOT PUSH! I am literally squeezing my legs together and clenching my bum cheeks as hard as I can as I feel this baby's head getting smashed between my legs trying to come out right there in the hallway. We make it to the OR, the dr greets us at the door all calm and collected. I'm like - HELLO! This baby is coming out now!The nurses are running around prepping the room, there are like 12 people in here, 2 nurses for each baby, a neonatologist, a few nurses for me, a few nurses there to assist the OB, and my OB (whose actually not my OB, she is just another OB from the practice who happens to be on call that night) plus Chris and me, obviously. It smells funny, its all super sterile and white with huge lights all over the ceiling. Not at all calming like the floral wallpapered delivery room with curtains and dressers that I had just left.

They are getting my monitors hooked up and the instruments laid out and the babies beds made up and then my bed breaks in half and these big leg stirrup things come up to hold my legs and I'm still trying to keep this baby inside me. I hear the dr behind me helping Chris into his scrubs...seriously? Then my favorite person walks in - the A. He is yelling at a nurse in the hallway for waking him up the wrong way. He is so angry that he has to come to MY rescue again in the middle of the night. Excuse me! Plus he is really angry that the nurses snapped my epidural cord and all he does is just clamp it shut. Def not getting any drugs now. I am really praying that I won't need a c-section and the A will have to come in and give me a spinal tap or whatever.

What feels like an eternity later, the dr comes over and says lets do this! And I ask, where is MY dr? Oh, she’s not going to make it. This will be over before she gets here so all you've got is me, she says with a grin. Very comforting. But I have no choice, so I push and I feel like Ty practically falls out.

4:03am: Tycen Steven Wernli is born. 5 lbs 4.5 oz, 17.25 inches. He has no name yet, but I love him immediately. He looks perfect. Small, but absolutely perfect. He cries loudly right away with no encouragement from the dr or nurses. I cry. I can feel of his goodness, of his sweet spirit. It is so powerful. The nurses and neonatologist lay him in his little bed and what does he do? He pees on one of the nurses! Shoots straight at her! Ha! They clean him up and check him out and weigh him. I am so happy. I am thinking, yay! He made it! 34 weeks and over 5 lbs and he obviously has a good set of lungs! It couldn't have been more than 6 min after he was born and a nurse kind of holds him up in my general direction and says, ok say good-bye momma! Ummm... WHAT!?!? I am still contracting (remember, I am feeling all of this goodness still). They whisk Ty down to the NICU and I'm so confused. Where is my baby going? Why the NICU? Is something wrong? What are they not telling me? Why can't I hold him or touch him? AHHH!!! So another nurse says, Oh all babies born before 36 weeks have to go to the NICU just as a precaution. Don't worry. Hmmm...why am I just finding out about this on the DELIVERY TABLE? This is very disconcerting. But I have another matter to worry about in that moment...

The dr is trying to manipulate Dax. He is being stubborn. She is real calm though and keeps saying, its ok - we're not in a rush, lets just let him take his time and we'll get him out. I am feeling all of this but for some reason I'm not in terrible pain. Don't get me wrong, this was NOT a pleasant experience, but I think I am too scared or something to be feeling all of the pain. For almost a half an hour this manual manipulation goes on and then finally, Dax comes out breech.

4:32am: Daxon Craig Wernli is born! 5 lbs 14 oz, 19 inches. My initial thought when I first saw him was – his neck is broken, oh my gosh I broke his neck. The dr was holding this tiny, very purple infant with her hands around his body but his giant, round head was completely flopped forward facing down at the ground in almost a grotesquely awkward manner. I ask the dreaded question, "Is he ok?" The dr turns to hand him to a waiting nurse who gently picks up his dangling head and then she says, “Yeah.” I’m doubtful. The nurses lay him down and strap an oxygen mask on his face and start smacking him until he finally cries a little, pathetic whimper. He is really purple. But they wrap him up quickly and the kind nurse (bless her heart) takes pity on me probably because I look terrified that my baby has some serious problem so she sneaks him to me for a quick second. I give him a little snuggle and I cry. He is looking right at me and making the smallest, softest little sighs as if to say – what the heck just happened to me? About a half a second later the nurse says they need to take Dax away but she lets Chris pick him up from me, give Dax a hug too and then hand him back to the nurse. In 30 mins my two babies went from being inside me, with me all the time, to being gone. I felt completely overwhelmed.

The boys are fraternal twins, meaning they each had their own water sac inside me and they each had their own placenta. To the shock of everyone left in the OR, the boys’ placentas come out fused together! This is apparently a rare thing. Somehow the two placentas started out as separate units and at some point along the way they grew together into one enormous placenta. This thing was seriously disturbing to look at. It is way bigger than either of my babies. The dr can barely hold the hold thing in her hands as she plops it in a tray. A nurse starts pulling at it and after a few minutes says to the dr, “I am really trying here but I just cannot get these two placentas apart.” The dr says, “Yep they are completely fused, you won’t be able to get them apart. Just send them to pathology in one bucket.” The funny thing is that I had had a feeling that they would be fused. I really did. In Jan when I was in the hospital for preterm labor (worst week ever) I had an ultrasound and the tech said she thought they were fused. I asked a few drs and a few other ultrasound techs what they thought after that and they all said it was rare and she was wrong. One tech at my dr office even told me that the techs at the hospital don’t know what they are talking about! Wow. Anyways, it really wasn’t too big of a deal since my boys were pretty close in size. Had I continued on in the pregnancy, however, Dax could’ve taken away some of the nutrients meant for Ty and it could’ve become a serious problem. Dax actually might’ve been doing that already for all we knew. Ty is almost two inches shorter and his stomach is two inches smaller than his younger brother. So strange…

Now only Chris and I and a few others are left in the OR. The dr gives me one stitch, she says I have “a scratch” not a tear or rip, because of Dax’s large, round head. Thank goodness. I can definitely handle a scratch. I look down at the dr who has been standing right in front of me this whole time and all of the sudden I realize that I can actually see her. My ridiculously large stomach is gone! Seriously, this dr is kind of short and when I was first pushing Ty out I literally could only see her from her eyes up. Now my stomach has fallen and I can see the underside of my belly and upper thighs for the first time in weeks. Really weird. Chris even makes some comment about how my stomach has magically disappeared and how funny it was that we could finally see the dr on the other side of the mountain now. Haha. It actually was very strange. With Jada and Kalle I remember looking at my big tummy after I delivered them and thinking, what the heck? Why are you still here? HA! So my stomach isn’t actually completely gone now but at the time it just went from soooo large to soooo much smaller in 30 min it was incredible.

6:00am: My labor nurse Gayle had wheeled me back to my delivery room and told Chris and I to get some rest. We didn’t have a baby (or two) to hold or care for so we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. It just felt so wrong. We couldn’t even go visit our kids yet. Not pleasant. Chris I think fell back to sleep but I had to PEE! I buzzed my nurse and told her I needed to go pronto. She moseyed on in my room and got out a bedpan! Are you kidding me? I have never used a bedpan in my life and quite honestly I am not even sure how it would work. I tell her that I was feeling just fine and I refused to pee in a bedpan, I will walk to the toilet thank you. She told me I couldn’t do that because I hadn’t recovered long enough or some other excuse and I told her that I was not numb, never was and that as soon as I had delivered those babies I honestly felt like I could’ve gotten off of the delivery table and walked out of the OR by myself. She nervously let me try to sit up and I practically ran to the bathroom. See, I told you my legs aren’t numb. Next I demanded that I be taken to see my babies. I really did like this nurse a lot but she was just doing her job and told me that I needed more rest. I was stubborn and she gave in.

6:30am: Gayle wheeled me in a wheelchair (though I really could’ve walked) down to my new room – my postpartum room. It was conveniently located directly across the hallway from the NICU. She tried to take me into my room but fortunately the door to the NICU opened at that moment and Ashley the nurse practitioner (who we have just loved) saw us and said why don’t you just come in for a moment and see your boys? Ah-ha! I knew I was going to like this girl. Ashley took over from there and pushed me into the NICU. This place was surprisingly large; it’s the biggest NICU in the county and one of the best in the state. We passed a few slumbering babies in open bassinets before we rounded a corner to an area with wall-to-wall incubators. I kept thinking; Did we just pass one of my babies? Where are they? Why are we walking towards those huge, daunting incubator things?... We approached an incubator with this scrawny little baby inside with tubes in his nose and mouth and wires on every limb and all over his chest and an IV in his arm. This cannot be MY baby. My boys are healthy, they are five pounds, and they are over 34 weeks! “This is Baby A,” Ashley said. I started to cry. I couldn’t see his face, his eyes or even his hair because he was so covered in medical equipment. It was incredibly scary. The nurse goes on to explain a little bit about what all of the contraptions connected to him are and what all of the machines surrounding his bed are monitoring. I didn’t hear it. Then we turned and started to walk towards the neighboring incubator and I began to cry again until the nurse pushed me passed that incubator to the next one. “This is Baby B,” she said. Wow, I had already mistaken some other baby in an incubator for mine. That didn’t take long! Anyways, our next baby looked even worse. He had more tubes going down his nose and throat and I could barely stand to even look at him. His legs and feet were still completely purple – very bruised from his rough breech extraction. More talking was going on and I was still in a fog. Then a dr showed us some x-rays of our boys’ cloudy, underdeveloped lungs and I really could not understand what he was saying about them. Finally, somebody took me back to my room. Chris and I spent a lot of time praying.

(Me sitting beside Ty's incubator later that day)

Now hold on a second, I feel like I am writing a tragedy here. In reality, this story has a happy ending and for the most part everything worked out amazingly well. The only true negative to my experience delivering my twins is that I was not expecting to have my babies whisked away to the NICU. I should’ve been more prepared for that – but I was for some reason under this strange notion that 6 weeks premature was ok. Hello! I’m crazy I guess.

Getting our twins here was actually an incredible experience. Chris and I were very excited/scared/nervous when we got to the hospital but then Christopher offered a special prayer for me called a Priesthood Blessing. Looking back I realize how blessed we were. When we got to the hospital it was quiet, I was one of the only women in labor then and the entire time our boys were in the NICU it was very slow in the hospital (meaning our boys received extra attention). I had an amazing labor nurse and the neonatologist and other nurses taking care of our boys were top quality. My epidural didn’t work, I thought that was horrible but really I think it was a blessing because I was able to literally prevent Ty from being born in the hallway and then later I was really able to help Dax be born breech, quickly. And my recovery from birthing twins has been amazing! I am soooooo lucky! I have been up and walking and feeling wonderful only hours after delivery. I actually felt guilty for a long time because I was extremely happy to not be pregnant any more. I was able to finally lie on my back without feeling faint, roll over from side to side easily and get out of bed without Christopher having to help me! I had gotten so huge and uncomfortable that breathing and eating and moving was very difficult and painful for me – now I felt relieved. My after birth cramps were nothing compared to the contractions I had been having for weeks. I didn’t even really take any pain meds in the hospital and I’ve taken none since I’ve been home. The post-partum experience from these boys has been almost opposite from my experiences with my girls.

Anyways, it has been such a blessing that I have recovered so quickly. I needed to. I spent the two days in the hospital basically in the NICU with my babies, sitting by their little incubators trying to figure out their names. When it was time for me to be discharged, I asked my nurse if I was getting a wheelchair and she laughed and told me that I could walk! Ha! Have you ever heard such craziness? But, that is exactly what I did. Walked myself out of the hospital with no babies. That was very strange…

My girls were overjoyed when we got home. They were so happy that I could finally walk up and down the stairs and hug them easily and finally join the family at the dinner table again! I felt like I got 14 days to focus and play with my girls before the boys came home from the hospital.

Delivering my twins was such a crazy, out-of-body experience. But it was also miraculous. I am so grateful for our two new additions to our family. I can’t believe that I was disappointed when I learned I was pregnant with twins – because twins are double the blessings! We have two perfect, very tiny, very adorable boys and we are incredibly blessed.

** I have edited some of the more personal details out of this story, mostly because this blog is for some reason still public. But if you are seriously interested in hearing more, call me. Or if you don't know me and you are pregnant with twins or a breech baby or something or are curious with good reason and would like more details - I honestly would be happy to share in the hopes that my experience can be a learning opportunity for others. Email me at kimberlywernli at gmail dot com. But don't expect a response for the next month or two... newborn twins at home has been keeping me ridiculously busy!!