This isn't going to be much of a birth story, since I had a c-section.  Let's face it, even when it's completely necessary (which I've no doubt mine was), most things about a surgical birth just kinda... suck, and I'm not interested in writing all the details.  So...

I started having contractions Friday evening.  They weren't terribly strong or even all that regular, but they were definitely different.  We decided to go ahead and take the kids over to Mom and Dad's, just in case.  Around 10pm or so, I was sure that I was in labor, so I called Abby (one of my midwives).  I could tell from poking around my abdomen that Pixie was still breech.  After some discussion, we decided it would probably be best to just head on to the hospital, and she and Kelly (the other midwife) would meet us there.

A little backstory on how we decided the hospital would be best... the day before, at my 39w appointment, I was 4cm dilated, and Pixie was still breech.  After a lot of thought and discussion with Abby, we decided that with me being as far along as I was, attempting a breech birth at home was probably just too risky.  We had no idea how big the babies were, and although it was still possible that Pixie could turn once I went into labor, we all felt that the best place for me to be was in the hospital.  If I got there and the ultrasound showed that she had turned, great... off to a birthing room we go.  If she hadn't, than surgery it would be.

Sidenote: Yes, I know that breech birth in the hospital can be a safe option.  However, the safety hinges on having an attendant who is a) willing and b) experienced and skilled with breech births.  I had neither.

We got to the hospital around 11:30pm.  Checked in, went back to triage, and the OB on duty came to do an ultrasound.  Sure enough - Pixie had her butt right above my pelvis, and didn't show any signs of budging.  A cervical check showed me to be about 6cm dilated.  It was time to get moving.

-Insert lots of icky stuff in preparation for surgery here-

We got into the OR at 1:40am, Reagan (Pixie) and Sera (Dixie) were born at 1:59am and 2:00am respectively, and I was headed back to recovery at 2:30am.  Thanks to a digital camera, Lee was able to film the birth while pretending he was just taking pictures.  If you're interested, you can see the video here:  Reagan & Sera's Birth.  It's surgery, so yes... it's bloody.  Don't watch while eating lunch, or if you have a weak stomach.

There are three things that helped me be ok with having a c/s:

1) I went into labor.  I can't begin to describe the difference that made to me.  If anyone faces a necessary surgical birth, I highly recommend waiting until you go into labor, if at all possible, rather than scheduling it.

2) Abby and Kelly were at the hospital with me.  Their calm reassurance that I was doing the right thing was wonderful.

3) I basically demanded that the babies come to the recovery room with me, assuming they had no immediate medical issues.  Of all the things I pushed back on that night, I pushed the hardest on this one, and won ("hospital policy" is that all c/s babies go immediately to the nursery for observation for at least an hour).  Being able to bond with them and nurse them immediately was HUGE.  I will never forget Reagan latching on for the first time... I don't think I've ever seen a brand new baby latch so enthusiastically!

The one thing I wish I had pushed harder on was having Lee with me during the prep for the surgery.  They wouldn't let him come in until the surgery started, and I think having him there for all the icky stuff prior to the surgery would have helped a lot.

Overall, I'd say my hospital stay was a good one.  The nurses were all very nice, and most of them were genuinely impressed with how quickly I was recovering and adapting to nursing two babies.  One of the night nurses told me, "Most of my moms with ONE baby are freaking out about nursing - I just can't believe how great you're doing and how calm you are with two of them!"

A few things I'm glad I either learned from friends who've been there, or figured out on my own:

- DEMAND that healthy babies come to recovery with you.  This is so incredibly important for bonding and the start of breastfeeding.  I can not imagine how miserable I would have been, sitting in recovery for two hours without my babies. 

- The nurses are not trying to torture you when the come to get you up and moving.  It's essential for a quick recovery.  Don't overdo it, but definitely get up as soon as possible, and continue to get out of bed frequently.

- Bring your own comfy pajamas, and shower and change as soon as possible.  You will feel worlds better once you're clean and in your own clothes.

- Bring (or ask for) several extra pillows for nursing.  The most comfortable position in which to nurse is the football hold, and it's hard to do without supportive pillows.  A Boppy is out of the question for the first few weeks - you won't want anything across your belly.

- Anyone who's given birth in a hospital has laughed at the disposable net underwear they give you.  TAKE HOME AS MANY PAIRS AS POSSIBLE!  Unless you normally wear gigantic, stretchy underwear, most of your usual underwear will continue to be uncomfortable for awhile (truth be told, mine still is!)

- Take your pain meds on schedule.  If you wait until you're in full-blown pain to take them, you'll be behind the curve, and wind up taking more meds in the long run.  I talked to my nurses, and they helped me find a schedule that kept me as comfortable as possible while still being alert enough to care for and interact with my babies.


So... that's my birth story, of sorts.  Although I am sad that I didn't get to have the birth I wanted, I have no doubts that this is what was best for me and the babies.  I know there are many women who are bitter and angry about their surgical births, and I'm incredibly thankful that I don't feel that way.  I do think that waiting until I went into labor made all the difference for me, along with standing up for myself, having a doctor I trust, and having all the right support people with me.

First of all, the ice and I are decidedly NOT friends.  I slipped and fell for the second time in as many weeks, on the way into the doctor's office, no less!  I'm seriously considering locking myself in the house until the weather is consistently 50 degrees or above.

The babies look great... they're both head down right now (that doesn't mean much at 21w for a singleton, but when there's two in there, they already have less room to move around, so good chance they'll stay that way).  Sexes are confirmed... definitely the same as what was under the cut in my last post.  :-D

And finally... these babies will NOT be born in the hospital, barring pre-term labor (before 35 weeks) or some other true emergency situation.  Otherwise, HELL no.  Wanna know why?  Lemme fill you in a little conversation I had with my OB this morning...

(To note, this was not with my primary OB, Dr. J.  I'm now officially being tag-teamed by him and Dr. R., the practice's "high risk" doctor.  This conversation was between me and Dr. R.)

So we look at the babies and my cervix on the ultrasound, and everything looks great.  He actually described my cervix as "just fantastic," which I gotta say... it's a little weird, but whatever.  He finishes up the exam, sits on the stool and says, "So, what else to you want to talk about?"  Since he appears to be in no hurry, I decide to dive in.  "Well, I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about what the births will look like... I've had easy labors and births historically, and certainly have never been classified as high-risk.  This is all new, and I'm not real big on interventions."

Him: "Well, when you get to the hospital, we'll do the usual things... start the IV, get the monitors hooked up, etc."
Me: "What's the IV for?"
Him: "To give you fluids, since you won't be able to eat or drink, and so that we can administer pitocin to make sure your labor progresses."
Me: "Ok" (I decided I wasn't going to argue anything at this point, because I wanted to just gather as much information as I could)
Him: "Of course, you can almost never get a good read on external monitors with twins, so we'll do an internal monitor on Baby A."
Me: "So, I'll be confined to the bed?"
Him: "Well, you'll probably be able to get into a chair, but yeah - that's pretty much it.  And I don't know if you've had epidurals with your other babies..."
Me: "I did with Jonny - I'll never do it again."
Him: "You're going to have to this time around."
Me: "Why?"
Him: "Well, your babies are both head-down, and assuming they stay that way, you can certainly try to deliver them vaginally, but even if you manage to get the first one out, a lot can happen between delivering Baby A and Baby B.  It's incredibly likely that Baby B will have to be delivered by C-Section, and if you haven't had an epidural, there's no choice but to put you to sleep for the surgery."
Me: dumbfounded, blank stare
Him: "Look, there's really just a whole host of things that can go wrong, and we have to be prepared for all of them..."

He said a bunch more stuff, but I had all but tuned him out at that point, and was trying hard not to cry.  On the other hand, it was all just so CLASSIC "birth is scary, and you don't know what you're doing, and I'm the expert" OB bullshit that I wish I'd recorded to play it back for anyone I could get to listen.

So yeah - no way in HELL I'm walking into a hospital to birth these babies if they're full-term (or close enough to count).  Yes, here, let me walk right into your gauntlet of interventions that will all but guarantee that these babies will have the worst possible entry into this world, possibly put them at serious risk, and ensure that  I'll have a horrific recovery.  Please, I'm all about that!

Fuck the machine that goes PING!

I called Lee as soon as I left the office, nearly sobbing I was so upset.  He responded perfectly... "Baby, settle down.  We can do whatever you want."  He may be a total shit along the way, but he always comes through.  :)

Of course, he followed that with, "When exactly did you become Grizzly Adams?" and something about giving birth out back in the woods.  Yes, no serious conversation can be had without a little ribbing, but that's ok.

So, we are now on a serious hunt for a midwife.  I already have the appointment scheduled at CHOICE for 3/26, and I've left a message for Kathy Mitchell.  If any of you have additional recommendations/contact info, I'm all ears!

I'm tired and cranky and I can't sleep.  Ugh.  And now I've reached that time of night where I wonder if I wouldn't be better off just hopping in the shower and starting my day, rather than make any further attempt to catch some Z's.  Think I'll just post a bunch of random stuff instead...

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I'm completely disappointed that a friend started giving her son formula before they even left the hospital, and he was nursing so well!  Apparently he had jaundice (what baby doesn't?), and a nurse told her that the only way to get rid of it is to feed him formula every three hours.  What the hell?  I know that some nurses say some really stupid shit in the hospital, but that is just... beyond.  And I think the part that aggravates me even more is that she just blindly believed the nurse!  She has two women (me and another friend) in her corner who have collectively breastfed for nearly 10 years total.  Both of us are very open about it.  Hell, when I visited her in the hospital the day after her baby was born, she asked me to help her get him latched on!  Why wouldn't she call either me or the other friend just to say, "Hey, does this sound right to you?"

But here's the thing... it doesn't even seem to bother her.  I mean, she was always on the "I'll give it a try" end of the spectrum, but I really thought that once she experienced nursing, she would find a firmer resolve.  Sadly, I don't think she even realizes that introducing a bottle and formula every three hours two days after the baby is born is darned near guaranteed to tank breastfeeding.  *sigh*

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I'm becoming increasingly... concerned... about the birth of these two babies.  The automatic "high risk" classification is driving me batty.   Ok, sure, the ultrasounds at every appointment are fun, but just thinking about how things will go with labor in the hospital makes me want to throw up.  So, Lee and I are exploring options.  Or well, I'm exploring options, and he's going along for the ride... grousing a bit along the way.  I know that, ultimately, he'll very likely go along with whatever I want... but what I really want is for him to be a part of the decision-making process, and for him to understand why this is so important not only for me, but for our babies.

Currently we're leaning towards laboring at home with a doula (if we can find one that we both click with) for as long as possible, then heading to the hospital at essentially the last minute - hopefully just in time to "catch," but not enough time to hook me up to eleventy billion monitors and tubes and wires.  That would solve the "me and babies in labor" part of the equation, but it likely won't allow for what I know is best for the babies after they're born... immediate skin-to-skin contact, making their way to my breasts, not cutting the cord until well after it stops pulsing, not disturbing them with exams and eye goop and weighing and measuring and all the other nonsense that can absolutely wait an hour or so (or not happen at all) while they adjust to their new environment.

We have an appointment with a midwife in a couple of weeks.  Yes - we're actually considering a home birth with twins.  *GASP*  When did I become so crunchy?  ;-)

The way I see it, my options are to fight like hell to have a normal birth in the hospital, or get the fuck out of the hospital.  I'm leaning HARD towards the latter.  We'll see what happens once we've actually met and had discussions with a few midwives.

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Asha was stolen from our yard on Thursday.  Yes, you read that right - someone stole our dog.  Who does that?!  Lee left her outside when he went to pick the kids up from school.  When he got back about an hour later, both of her collars (one for the electric fence, and one with her tags on it) were laying next to our garage, and she was nowhere to be found.  She's crafty, but no way she managed to get out of both her collars by herself - someone snatched her.

I went straight to the Franklin County Animal Shelter from work, without much hope.  Of course, she wasn't there.  I filled out a little card and explained to a couple of people what happened.  They didn't have any more hope than I did.

Lo and behold - I got a call on Monday.  Animal control had brought in a brussels griffon over the weekend.  It was her!  She was found just over 13 miles from our house, in Westerville.  The only thing I can think is that she must have gotten away from whoever took her - she couldn't have gotten that far on her own.  If whomever took her tried to put her in a fenced-in yard, I guarantee she got away.  She has a vertical jump of around 8'.  It's crazy.

The really annoying part of all this is that I'm pretty sure one of our neighbors had something to do with it.  A few weeks ago, someone kept calling the humane society on us because they felt we were leaving Asha out in the cold too long.  She has shelter out there (under our porch initially, but we've since purchased a doghouse), and at least 75% of the time the goofy dog will NOT come in the house.  When we told CAHS this, they gave really helpful suggestions like, "you have the bigger brain - you're going to have to just chase her down and get her to come in; coax her into the house with yummy treats like hot dogs and cheese."  Um, no.  I don't go out of the way to convince my *kids* to come into the house when I think they might be cold.  I'm certainly not going to chase a dog around the house.  If she's too stupid to come into the house when I'm holding the door open, calling her, and it's 15 degrees outside... well, the only solution I can come to is that she likes it out there.  :-P

Anyway, we have one busy-body neighbor who once proudly told me about how she called CPS on one of the families on our street.  Not out of any true, heartfelt concern for the kids.  No, she primarily just seemed to want to punish them for using her as "free babysitting service" because she was always outside watching her own kids, and these other parents left their kids outside all day and never came out to check on them (noticing a theme here?)

After Asha was stolen, I sent an email to the three people on the street I have addresses for, one of them being the busy-body, to let them know what happened and ask if maybe they saw anything.  Two out of three of them responded.  Wanna guess which one *didn't* respond?  Yeah.  Then when she saw that Asha was back, she kind of did a double-take, but didn't say a word to either me or Lee.  Suspicious, methinks.

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By the way, we're pretty sure we know the sexes. 
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Good gravy, this heartburn just might kill me.  I'm taking Zantac twice a day, and still waking up and popping Tums most nights.  I'm also adding regular doses of benefiber to my morning and evening beverages, as well as popping the occasional stool softener, because seriously - shitting bowling pins is just no fun.  My poor digestive system is probably screaming, "What do you want from me?!" but every time I try to take one of the remedies out of the mix, I pay dearly for it.  Whee... pregnancy is fun!

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American Idol is a total load of crap this year.  Ok, it kind of has been for awhile, but this year it's especially offensive.  Ryan Seacrest is an absolute tool.  I'm completely incapable of watching the show real-time, because if I can't fast forward through his schtick, I find myself having uncontrollable urges to stab my eyes out with corn skewers.  And the judges!  Are you kidding me?  I'm convinced Randy is either tone deaf, or he's decided that calling singers "pitchy" makes him sound like he knows what he's talking about.  At least 90% of the time, the singer was not off-pitch.  They may have sucked ass, but they were on key.  Paula continues to be unable to form a coherent sentence, but it's not even fun anymore, because she keeps spewing out the same thing over and over again: "You're so unique!  Rainbows!  Puppies!  Where's my bong?"  Simon is the only one that makes a lick of sense, and if I were him I'd be ready to toss Ryan and Paula off a cliff.

And what the hell is up with Carly Smithson's stylist?  I can't stand her, and really wish she would get voted off already, but in the meantime, could they stop making her look like a hideous cow?  In the packages, when she's done her own makeup and is wearing her normal clothes, she looks good.  She's not traditionally pretty, but she's kinda striking... certainly not ugly.  However, every time she gets on stage she looks puffy and misshapen and generally awful.  What the hell was she wearing tonight?  A blue lamé trash bag?  With it gathered up around her neck the way it was, it kinda looked like one of those things you hang on the door and stuff grocery bags in.  And pink eye shadow?  Really?  Just stop it.

I adore David Cook and Jason Castro, so I will absolutely keep watching as long as they are on.  I'll probably continue watching for the train wrecks, too, 'cause I'm just and addict that way.  :-P

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Alright - that's probably enough random nonsense to make up for a three week lapse in posting.  And it's now 4:19am.  Think I'll go sleep for two hours.