Where to begin? I wish I would have had the time to document each stage since the birth of our girls so that I wouldn't be writing this in hindsight, but I've had no extra time on my hands since our girls made their way into our world.
Friday, October 25th 2013 I was prepped for surgery and got to WALK down the hall to the OR - which was pretty exciting since I was never allowed to walk outside my room for 2
Months. Dallas wasn't allowed to come with me when they administered the spinal so that was pretty nerve wrecking for me. It didn't hurt like I thought it would. As soon as they gave me my spinal they hurried me to lay down and tested to make sure I was numb. There were so many people in our OR. I couldn't see anything and just remember being really calm. My anesthesiologist was incredible. She talked me through everything.
Dallas was holding my hand and would stand up time to time to see the procedure. They kept asking him to sit down lol. Then we heard it- our first girls cry (as I'm writing this I am so emotional thinking about it) it was the best sound. Then came the next cry. Dallas looked at me and I'll never, EVER forget the look in his eyes. He said they were ok and their cords were so tangled. The doctors and nurses couldn't get over how tight they were tangled and my baby b (Addison) had the cord wrapped around her neck. Everything at that moment was perfect. Everything we had gone through was more than worth it. They brought me each girl and put them close to my face so I could kiss and touch them. I couldn't believe we had our girls finally. I was at peace and so in love. They were born at 34 weeks , 1 day at 9:22 am and weighed 4.12 Same time, same weight.
Dallas left with the girls to the NICU and I went back to my room for recovering. After a while, the nurses wheeled me into see them in the NICU. They were so beautiful and so tiny.
The next 12 hours were kind of a blur. I didn't make it back to the NICU until the next night. I was in so much pain and having the worst hot flashes of my life. My nurses wanted me to take the pain meds but I didn't want that transferring through my milk to the babies.
Over the next few days my husband and my mom were my saviors. Having been on bed rest for 4 months and laying in a hospital bed for 2 months, my muscles had atrophied and the C Section recovery was a lot harder on me than a normal recovery. The girls were in isolates and it was really hard for me to stand next to them and bend over in order to put my hands through the holes to touch them. I was not prepared for how physically difficult my recovery would be.
The girls were in overall good health. They were in the NICU for 11 days and came home together- which is really rare. My heart jumped out of my chest and into their arms every time I had to leave them and go home. THANK GOD for our main nurse, Stephanie. She was an angel sent to me to help me survive the NICU (she had triplets and knew all too well the emotional wreckage that would ensue). Seeing my girls with IVs and feeding tubes and under lights and constantly being poked and probed was horrible. Dallas was the most amazing man during this process. He catered to my every wish and let me stay longer when i should have gone home to rest. Being with those girls was the most important thing for me. I tried to breast feed the first couple of days, but because they needed to know how much my girls were drinking, Dallas and I decided I should pump and bottle feed my breast milk so that we could have an accurate reading. Every day was a test for them. They had to drink enough in order to be removed from IVs and feeding tubes, and their feedings were so inconsistent. one time they would do great, and the next they would need to put the rest of the feeding down their tubes - I will never be able to verbalize the emotional roller coaster (for lack of a better term) that being the NICU was. i am so grateful we were there for such a short time.
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