As I’ve been told, “It may not be easy for you to get pregnant, but the Lord certainly blessed you with fast, easy deliveries”.

12/21/11 – Wednesday

I felt fine all day. My MIL came and gave me my second betamethasone (steroid) shot. I organized with her that on Friday morning she would take Ave so that I could get presents wrapped and a few things done around the house before Christmas Eve. In the afternoon I made pizza for our dinner that night, but didn’t eat much. Ave went to bed and all was as usual. I joked with Matt that I was going to wake him up in the middle of the night, to tell him my water broke.

12/22/11 – Thursday

I got up to pee around 12:40 or so….every time I get out of bed I always think about my water breaking, for the simple reason that that’s what happened with Ave. I went pee, stood up, and felt a squish feeling (kind of like a wet finger in a balloon)…very tiny, nothing much. Then I started trickling and it stopped, then some more and stopped. I just kept saying “No! No! No!” over and over. I grabbed a towel and went in our room, threw on the lights and told Matt, “I know I was joking about telling you my water broke, but umm….I’m serious it did”.

I just stood there on the verge of tears shaking. I couldn’t even dial the hospital, Matt had to call them and tell them all that was going on. They told us to come on up. A few minutes later they called us back, “We just looked at your chart. We want you to drive to O-town, they’ll transfer you via ambulance to AMC: Are we doing a vaginal delivery or a c-section?”; “Umm, I don’t know”; “We’ll talk when you get here.”

I just laid in bed while Matt talked to people. Then we called my parents (6 times before someone answered) and told them we were going and bringing Ave to them. We got to their house around 1:30 and left Ave with them.

We got to O-town around 2am. They took me right in. The doctor who delivered Ave was on call; she checked me out, they put the babies on the monitor (they are not equipped there for triplet pregnancies), and started IVs. I was having minimal contractions, but nothing that was even registering, and my cer.vix was still closed. We were there for about an hour before they were ready to transport me.

We got to AMC around 4:30. I’d had 3 contractions on the ride up, but nothing that was much. More like my stomach grumbling with hunger pains than contractions. As soon as they got me in a room at AMC they started me on the monitors, another IV. There was no noticeable contractions so they figured I would just hang out at the hospital until I actually went into labor (a few days?).

At 5:30 a doctor came in and actually checked my cerv.ix, which was now 4cm. It was looking like baby B (Ellie) was engaged and had pushed baby A (Henry) out of the way. We were just hanging out in the room, contractions getting a bit stronger. It was hell….they wouldn’t let me out of the bed or eat or drink because of the possible epidural and not knowing if we would be having a c-section or not.

We met with another doctor around 6:00am, Dr. K: He was AWESOME! If I could have him deliver all of our kids I would, he was that great to work with. He came in and checked me, then started talking about a vaginal delivery. He was telling us about his experience with multiples and breech extractions, how he felt completely comfortable with doing this (even without an epidural). We spent about 20 minutes just talking to him.

He is the reason why everything went so smoothly and we had a vaginal delivery. He recommended having the epidural to avoid the general anesthesia in an emergency, and in the event someone didn’t move the way they should and he had to manually extract a baby. It was agreed that I would have a minimal epidural dose, because I was not at all keen on it, and Dr. K didn’t really feel it would be necessary.

At 7:30 he came back in and checked me and I was already 5-6cm and the babies were moving down. They were waiting for a c-section to get done before they started prepping me, but my body was not going to let them take their time. He suggested starting the epidural ASAP; by 9am I had been tapped and they started a slow drip 15 minutes later.

They started pytocin around 9:40 or so since my body was doing everything it was supposed to but my contractions weren’t keeping up with the rest of my body (probably because of the epidural).

By 10:10 they had wheeled me into the OR and I was scared…I’ll admit it. Here I was having a vaginal delivery of my babies at 33 weeks 6 days: This was not where I wanted to be, not what I wanted to do, and I was still {kind of} freaking out about a vaginal delivery.

I wanted a vaginal delivery, but it really rather worried me, because I knew all that could wrong. We’d scheduled a c-section because I was much more nervous about going through with it than I wanted to admit. It was kind of a “nice idea”, but not something I expected to have happen.

Dr. K got everything prepped, I moved myself over to the OR table, he got situated and turned away to prep something else. My favorite MFM was there as back up, Dr. J, then in walked Dr. C (the one who had wanted me to reduce the pregnancy and got mad at me): I looked at Matt and said “watch the personalities”.

Dr. C immediately started taking over, getting ready to reach up in, and pushing Dr. K out. Thankfully, Dr. K looked at him and said “I can do that”. They looked down and Henry was already crowning. Dr. K yelled out, “We have a head!” and everyone flew into a tither. Henry Charles was born at 10:20 am.

They waited a few seconds to see if B would pop down, but nothing was happening. They did a quick ultrasound which showed that the next one in line was breech and not moving down. I had 3 doctors all reaching up my hoo-haa and pushing on my stomach, trying to move babies down (I was VERY glad for that epidural….that happened with Ave’s delivery too, but that was one doctor, with tiny hands, for a few seconds).

At 10:26 they finally got a grip on James Matthew and pulled him out feet first. They had to go back in and pull C out…Elanor Susan was born at 10:28, feet first.

Henry immediately let out a cry when he was born, I burst into tears to hear his little voice above the doctors and nurses. James didn’t make a peep until after they had suctioned his mouth, and then only a small whimper.

Elanor didn’t do anything…they immediately whisked her away since she was struggling to breath and after a few minutes of several people working on her she was finally breathing better. I briefly got to see James and Elanor before they whisked them out of the room. I never even saw Henry, because the OR wasn’t big enough for 3 NICU teams.

I asked the nurse if I had any tearing, which I didn’t (I did with Ave, but she was 8lbs 4.5oz). Afterward, they got me completely cleaned up and moved back to my room. It was just time to wait now. Dr. K came in and de-briefed me about everything. What was interesting was even though we were all annoyed with Dr. C’s intervention (he ended up leaving immediately after they were born), Dr. K was very professional: We all KNOW Dr. C is a great, skilled doctor, particularly with vaginal births, it was a blessing to have him there in case something happened. He’s just not very personable.

Thursday night I just sat in my hospital bed, completely in awe. We couldn’t have planned or asked for a more perfect arrival of our little ones! We knew God had a plan all along and that it would be amazing, but to see how it all played out was just mind blowing…I’m still struggling to wrap my head around it.

Dr. K was such a blessing, we never even discussed a c-section. I really just followed along with his opinion and advice. He knew from my chart that I was interested in a vaginal delivery, but we never really discussed whether it was an option or not.

I do think, that if it wasn’t for him, I would most likely have had a c-section (as that is what my MFM would’ve felt comfortable with): I am beyond thankful I didn’t. I googled Dr. K Thursday night, he’s only a 4th Year Resident: He’s already a phenomenal doctor! {Yes, I will admit it, I think on some level I have a definite crush on him…it didn’t hurt that he was rather cute too 🙂 }

The entire experience was MORE than I had hoped or even thought it could be. I had my favorite MFM there, Dr. J; I had 2 doctors that were awesome and I absolutely loved; a nursing staff that was fantastic throughout the delivery. I had my husband there supporting me and taking pictures (he actually got better pictures this time than with Ave’s delivery).

If I had gone even a week or two more then I seriously think a vaginal delivery would’ve been out of the question. Also, Ellie had only gained 3ozs since our last growth scan 10 days earlier…it was time for them to come out. It was just an absolutely INCREDIBLE experience.

I will probably be forever in awe of God’s absolute and total control over every single detail of my labor and our babies’ safe delivery. Every single detail was worked out down to the absolute perfection of every tiny detail. Our God is BEYOND awesome!