Happy Birthday Twins (Reprint / Repost)

Today is my twins' birthday. The following is an e-mail that I sent out to friends and family after their birth.

The babies arrived a little early – They were born at 2335 (Ava – 3lbs 8oz – 17”) and 2336 (Audrey – 4lbs 11oz – 16 ½”) on 12/28/04 via c-section. Everyone is fine.

The night started out fine – Aaron got home at about 8pm from work and taking pictures of Dean’s latest glass creations. Tia looked at the pictures and went back to bed. At about 9pm she yelled at me that here water broke. When I went in the bathroom I didn’t see any large puddles of water – in fact there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. I kinda thought she was kidding or didn’t know what she was talking about. I made her talk to the nursing hotline at the hospital and they told her to come on down – the hospital is of course in Mission Valley – about 85 miles away – and it was raining cats and dogs.

Luckily I made Tia pack her bags on Sunday so all I had to do is get her off the floor where she was on her hands and knees in pain and throw her in the car as well. We had a few conversations about her leaking or breaking her water in the car so she remembered to sit on her jacket just in case. We made it to the hospital in 55 minutes. There was no conversation on the way because Tia appeared to be in some type of pain – about 6 minutes apart.

When we arrived they brought her into an examining room to see if she was really in labor – here is where I was going to get to say “I told you so” and we were going to go home with false labor pains. Tia asked the nurse if she could have some drugs for the pain. The nurse looked at Tia and at the monitors she had hooked up and said “I think you are having labor contractions”. Aaron is proved wrong again.

The doctor on call was in another c-section at the time so it took about 5 minutes before she could come in and examine Tia. When she was examined the doctor said Tia was 6-8cm dilated. Tia asked for some drugs again. The doctor said not until she filled out all the paperwork. Two nurses came in and started the various paperwork at the same time. Tia couldn’t remember anything and her medical record was at her doctor’s office in San Marcos for her appointment the next day. Tia just nodded a lot while she was writhing in pain. Finally everything was signed off, I was wearing some scrubs about 10 sizes too small – they don’t have XXL I guess – and we were off to the surgery room. They finally gave Tia some drugs and the doctor said to roller her on her side because if she was to sit up a kid would fall out. From the time we entered to the time we went into surgery was 20 minutes.

Out popped the kids. I got to watch the second one (Audrey) come out – I think if someone tugged on me like that to get my noodle out of a hole that was too small for my head I would have punched that someone.

Ava is small but in very good shape – she has a little squished nose and her face is not quite symmetrical but that was from her sister pressing her head up against Tia’s ribs.

Audrey had a little problem keeping her lungs inflated by herself and was put on some forced oxygen but after about 18 hours she was breathing room air with a little forced pressure. I guess she didn’t have some surfactant produced in her lungs yet that allowed the lungs to stay inflated when she exhaled. She is progressing really well and Friday should go into an incubator.

Tia will probably be out on Saturday and has to stay that long because of the surgery. The babies will get to come home when they are eating regularly and can maintain their own body temp in an open crib – they think 5 days from birth and up to 2 weeks.